Tom Barbash

Tom Barbash is an American writer of fiction and nonfiction, educator and critic. He is the author of the novel The Last Good Chance, a collection of short stories Stay Up With Me, and the bestselling nonfiction work On Top of the World: Cantor Fitzgerald, Howard Lutnick & 9/11: A Story of Loss & Renewal. His fiction has been published in Tin House, Story magazine, The Virginia Quarterly Review and The Indiana Review. His criticism has appeared in the New York Times and the San Francisco Chronicle.

He taught at Stanford University, where he was a Stegner Fellow, and is now a Jones Lecturer at California College of the Arts, and at the Rainier Writing Workshop, a low-residency MFA program at Pacific Lutheran University. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Honors

• Stegner Fellowship, Stanford University
• MacDowell Colony Fellow
• California Book Award for First Fiction (2002)
• James Michener Award (2002)
• Nelson Algren Award for Short Fiction
• Recipient, National Endowment of the Arts grant in fiction.

Personal life

• Barbash was formerly a reporter for the Syracuse Post Standard, an experience that helped to shape his novel The Last Good Chance, which is set in upstate New York.
• He is a member of the San Francisco Writers' Grotto, a workspace co-operative that also includes Po Bronson, Caroline Paul, Peter Orner, ZZ Packer, Jason Roberts and B. Ruby Rich, among others.