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.[4]
Writer and literary critic
Barbash is the author of the novels Dakota Winters[5] 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.[2]