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CORVALLIS, Ore. - Tobias Wolff earned a reputation for his short stories and memoirs, and his eagerly anticipated novel, "Old School," did little to dispel his reputation as one of America's most engaging writers.

Wolff will appear at Oregon State University on Friday, April 28, when he will give a free public lecture and read from his works beginning at 7:30 p.m. in the LaSells Stewart Center's Construction and Engineering Auditorium.

His appearance is part of OSU's 2005-06 Visiting Writers Series, sponsored by the university's English Department, and supported by the Office of the Provost, the Valley Library, and OSU's Center for the Humanities.

Wolff has written a pair of memoirs, including "The Boy's Life," which was made into a major film starring Leonardo DiCaprio as Wolff, Robert De Niro as his abusive step-father, and Ellen Barkin as his mother. His second memoir, "In Pharaoh's Army: Memories of the Lost War," recounts the author's tour of Vietnam. Time Magazine reviewer Paul Gray described the work as a "tense, mesmerizing memoir (that) reads like a rigorously boiled down short story."

With his debut novel, "The Barrack's Thief," Wolff won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, raising expectations for his second novel, "Old School." In that novel, Wolff tells the story of a boy in prep school in 1962 who hides the pain in his life by telling stories - and then aspires to become a writer. He pursues a writing competition because the winner will meet Robert Frost, Ayn Rand and Ernest Hemingway, and his obsession with meeting Hemingway may prove his undoing.

In addition to the PEN/Faulkner Award, Wolff has received the National Book Award, the O. Henry Award three times, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Biography.

His stories also frequently appear in The New Yorker, Harper's, Atlantic and elsewhere. He is on the faculty at Stanford University, where he is the Ward W. and Priscilla B. Woods Professor.