Tom Barbash is an American writer of fiction and nonfiction, as well as an educator and critic.

Speaker, panelist, and interviewer

Barbash has served as host for onstage events for The Commonwealth Club, Litquake, BookPassage, and the Lannan Foundation.

Teaching

He taught at Stanford University, where he was a Stegner Fellow, and now teaches novel writing, short fiction, and nonfiction in the MFA Program in Writing at the California College of the Arts in San Francisco. Barbash has held fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, The James Michener Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Writer and literary critic

Barbash is the author of the novels Dakota Winters and 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, The Virginia Quarterly Review and The Indiana Review. His criticism has appeared in the New York Times and the San Francisco Chronicle. He was formerly a reporter for the Syracuse Post-Standard, an experience that helped to shape his novel The Last Good Chance.

Honors

Personal life

Barbash lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.