John Irving

John Irving was born in Exeter, New Hampshire. His stepfather taught at the Phillips Exeter Academy, where Irving would later study. He graduated from the University of New Hampshire and earned an MFA from the prestigious Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where he studied under Kurt Vonnegut. In 1968, he published his first novel, Setting Free the Bears. Ten years later he published The World According to Garp, which became an international bestseller and won the National Book Award for Fiction in 1980. In 1989, he published A Prayer for Owen Meany. Irving has published over a dozen novels throughout his career, including numerous bestsellers, and he continues to write today. Recurring motifs in his fiction include private boys’ academies, freak accidents, mysteries of paternity, high school wrestling, and bears.