A Free Event Co-sponsored with The Writer’s Center
Friday, October 23, 7-8pm
The Writer’s Center, 4508 Walsh St, Bethesda MD 20815
The F. Scott Fitzgerald Literary Festival and The Writer’s Center present readings in tribute to legendary author Tobias Wolff. This event will feature multiple award-winning author Richard Bausch, award-winning novelist Varun Gauri, PEN/Faulkner winner Mahreen Sohail, and Tobias Wolff himself.
FREE and open to the public. RSVP required at The Writer’s Center website here.
Tobias Wolff is the author of the memoirs This Boy’s Life (1989) and In Pharaoh’s Army (1994), and he has also written novels and short story collections, including Our Story Begins: New and Selected Stories (2008). His novel The Barracks Thief (1984) won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. He received a National Medal of Arts from President Barack Obama in September 2015. Wolff is the Ward W. and Priscilla B. Woods Professor of English, Emeritus, at Stanford, where he lives with his wife Catherine. They have three children and four grandchildren.
Richard Bausch is the author of thirteen novels, among which are Hello to the Cannibals (2002), Thanksgiving Night (2006), Peace (2008), Before, During, After (2014), and Playhouse (2023). His ten collections of short fiction include The Fireman’s Wife (1990), The Selected Stories of Richard Bausch, in The Modern Library (1996), The Stories of Richard Bausch (2003),Wives & Lovers: 3 Short Novels (2004), Something is Out There (2010),Living in The Weather of the World (2017) and, most recently, The Fate of Others (2025). His multiple honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Award in Literature Academy of Arts and Letters, the Lila Wallace Reader’s Digest Writer’s Award, the 2004 PEN/Malamud Prize; the 2009 Dayton Literary Peace Prize for his novel, Peace; and the Rea Award for Achievement in the Art of Short Fiction. In addition, his work has been adapted for three full length feature films. He has been with the Writing Program of Chapman University in Orange, CA since 2012.
Varun Gauri’s debut novel, For the Blessings of Jupiter and Venus, was selected for NPR’s Books We Love 2024, chosen as a Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Award Winner in Adult Fiction, and won the 2024 Carol Trawick Fiction Prize. While at the World Bank’s research department, Varun led studies on social policy and behavioral economics in dozens of countries around the world, and his academic work was covered in The New York Times, The Economist, Le Monde, The Hindu, and The Guardian. Varun now teaches at Princeton University and serves on the board of The Writer’s Center in Bethesda, MD.
Mahreen Sohail was born in Islamabad, Pakistan. Her debut story collection, Small Scale Sinners, won the 2026 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. She has an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College, where she studied as a Fulbright Scholar, and was a Writing Fellow at A Public Space and a Charles Pick Fellow at the University of East Anglia. Her work has appeared in Granta, The Kenyon Review, Pushcart Prize XLII, and elsewhere. She lives in Washington, DC.
Click here to register for this free event at The Writer’s Center website.
