Tom Barbash is an American writer of fiction and nonfiction, educator and critic. He is the author of the novel The Last Good Chance 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 currently teaches at Stanford University, where he was a Stegner Fellow, and 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.
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.