Geoffrey Wolff

Who is Geoffrey Wolff?

Geoffrey Wolff is an American novelist, essayist, biographer, and travel writer. Among his honors and recognition are the Award in Literature of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and fellowships of the National Endowment for the Arts, the American Academy in Berlin, and the Guggenheim Foundation. His younger brother is the writer Tobias Wolff.

Geoffrey Wolff was born in Hollywood, California, to Duke and Rosemary Wolff. His parents separated when he was twelve, his brother living with their mother and Geoffrey with their father. He has described the adventure of his upbringing in an acclaimed memoir of his father, The Duke of Deception, which was runner-up for the Pulitzer Prize.

Geoffrey Wolff was educated at the Choate School, graduating in 1955; at Princeton, graduating summa cum laude in 1960; and at Cambridge University. He has taught at Robert College in Istanbul, at Princeton, and at the University of California, Irvine, where he was professor of English and comparative literature and, from 1995 to 2006, director of the influential Graduate Fiction Program. He has also been a book editor at the Washington Post and at Newsweek.