John Irving

John Irving
Irving in Cologne, Germany, September 14, 2010
Born	John Wallace Blunt, Jr. (1942-03-02) March 2, 1942 (age 74) Exeter, New Hampshire, United States
Occupation	Novelist Screenwriter
Alma mater	University of New Hampshire University of Iowa Iowa Writers' Workshop
Notable works	The World According to Garp The Cider House Rules A Prayer for Owen Meany A Widow for One Year
Notable awards	Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay
Website
john-irving.com

John Winslow Irving (born John Wallace Blunt, Jr. on March 2, 1942) is an American novelist and Academy Award-winning screenwriter.

Irving achieved critical and popular acclaim after the international success of The World According to Garp in 1978. Some of Irving's novels, such as The Cider House Rules (1985), A Prayer for Owen Meany (1989), and A Widow for One Year (1998), have been bestsellers. Five of his novels have been adapted to film. Several of Irving's books (Garp, Meany, A Widow for One Year) and short stories have been set in and around Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, New Hampshire. He won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay in 1999 for his script The Cider House Rules.

Irving was born John Wallace Blunt, Jr. in Exeter, New Hampshire, the son of Helen Frances (née Winslow) and John Wallace Blunt, Sr., a writer and executive recruiter; the couple parted during pregnancy. Irving grew up in Exeter, as the stepson of a Phillips Exeter Academy faculty member, Colin Franklin Newell Irving, and nephew of another, H. Hamilton "Hammy" Bissell (1929). Irving was in the Phillips Exeter wrestling program both as a student athlete and as an assistant coach, and wrestling features prominently in his books, stories, and life. Irving's biological father, whom he never met–even if the latter was, from time to time and on purpose, attending his son's wrestling competitions–, had been a pilot in the Army Air Forces and during World War II was shot down over Burma in July 1943, but survived (an incident incorporated into the novel The Cider House Rules). Irving did not find out about his father's heroism until 1981.

• Novelist
• Screenwriter

• University of New Hampshire
• University of Iowa
• Iowa Writers' Workshop

• The World According to Garp
• The Cider House Rules
• A Prayer for Owen Meany
• A Widow for One Year

• Setting Free the Bears (1968)
• The Water-Method Man (1972)
• The 158-Pound Marriage (1974)
• The World According to Garp (1978)
• The Hotel New Hampshire (1981)
• The Cider House Rules (1985)
• A Prayer for Owen Meany (1989)
• A Son of the Circus (1994)
• The Imaginary Girlfriend (non-fiction, 1995)
• Trying to Save Piggy Sneed (collection, 1996)
• A Widow for One Year (1998)
• My Movie Business (non-fiction, 1999)
• The Cider House Rules: A Screenplay (1999)
• The Fourth Hand (2001)
• A Sound Like Someone Trying Not to Make a Sound (2004)
• Until I Find You (2005)
• Last Night in Twisted River (2009)
• In One Person (2012)
• Avenue of Mysteries (2015)

• The World According to Garp (1982)
• The Hotel New Hampshire (1984)
• Simon Birch (1998) (partly based on A Prayer for Owen Meany)
• The Cider House Rules (1999)
• The Door in the Floor (2004) (from A Widow for One Year)

• Book magazine, July/August 2001 ("John Irving Wrestles Fate" by Dorman T. Shindler)
• Pages magazine, July/August 2005 ("The Creative Crucible" by Dorman T. Shindler)
• Portland Magazine, May 2012 ("Singular First Person," interview by Colin W. Sargent)

• Official website
• John Irving at DMOZ
• Literary Encyclopedia
• John Irving at the Internet Movie Database
• Works by John Irving at Open Library
• The New York Times — Featured Author: John Irving
• John Irving interviewed by Jonathan Derbyshire on New Statesman about his book "Last Night in Twisted River"
• Ron Hansen (Summer–Fall 1986). "John Irving, The Art of Fiction No. 93". The Paris Review.