John Irving

John Irving was born John Wallace Blunt Jr. in 1942 in Exeter, New Hampshire. He grew up in the shadow of Phillips Exeter Academy, where his stepfather taught, and where Irving himself attended school and discovered his twin passions for wrestling and writing. He studied at the University of Pittsburgh, the University of Vienna, and the University of New Hampshire, and received an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where he studied under Kurt Vonnegut. His early novels, including Setting Free the Bears and The 158-Pound Marriage, attracted modest attention. This author hub collects 1 work in the Canon Compass ranking, led by The World According to Garp.