Tobias Wolff kicks off Living Writers lectures -

Series also marks start of N.C. Literary Festival

As a paratrooper during the Vietnam War, a high school teacher, a night watchman and an honors English student at Oxford University, Tobias Wolff garnered a variety of life experiences that inspired him to write.

Now, as the first of four distinguished visiting writers this fall, the acclaimed memoirist and short story author will sit down with the Living Writers creative writing class to talk with students who have been studying his work.

Wolff will speak at 5:30 p.m. tonight in the University Room of Hyde Hall.

“They’ve read seven or eight of his stories and some supplemental interviews,” said Pam Durban, an English and comparative literature professor who teaches the class.

“The point of the writers’ visits is that there is no substitute for being able to read someone’s work and then ask them questions personally.”

Wolff is currently a distinguished professor of English and creative writing at Stanford. His works, including the memoir “This Boy’s Life,” and recent short story collection “Our Story Begins: New and Selected Stories,” have received multiple awards.

“He’s a great individual to inaugurate this program and curriculum,” said Evan Gurney, the teaching assistant for the class. “It seems appropriate that his reading coincides with the start of the literary festival.”

The N.C. Literary Festival opens today and continues through the weekend. Although Wolff’s lecture is part of the Distinguished Visiting Writers series, the event is one of the first of the festival.

The class closely examines the stylizing and sequencing of contemporary writers’ works.

“I have them reading in a particular way,” Durban said. “They are reading like a writer, reading for how things get done on a page, looking at time, character development and usage of grammar. They will be writing their own material near the end of the semester based on what they’ve learned.”

Gurney said that he finds the class’ alternative style of curriculum exciting.

“Students read the writer’s work in the context of their own writing,” Gurney said. “It makes the whole craft of writing come alive.”

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