John Irving

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. Many of Irving's novels, including 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 into films. 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. 2Early life 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