John Irving published his first novel, Setting Free the Bears, when he was twenty-six. He won a National Book Award for The World According to Garp, and an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for The Cider House Rules—a film with seven Academy Award nominations.

He competed as a wrestler from age fourteen until he was thirty-four, wrestling in college at the University of Pittsburg and post-collegiately at the New York Athletic Club. He coached the sport until he was forty-seven—at various preparatory schools and colleges in the northeast. In 1992, Mr. Irving was inducted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame in Stillwater, Oklahoma.

In 2001, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters; his novels include A Prayer for Owen Meany, A Widow for One Year, and his eleventh and most recent, Until I Find You.

Mr. Irving is completing his twelfth novel, to be called Last Night in Twisted River. In addition to an original screenplay, he is also writing an adaptation of his novel The Fourth Hand and has adapted his novel A Son of the Circus as a film script—with Jeff Bridges in the role of the missionary.