Famed Novelist, Screenwriter to Visit Willamette

John Irving, one of the most popular and respected writers, will deliver the spring Atkinson Lecture Feb. 24, 2010. Irving's 13th novel, Last Night in Twisted River, will be released in October 2009.

Irving's first international bestseller, The World According to Garp, introduced readers to his inventive and expansive style, memorable characters and masterfully woven stories-within-stories. Garp won a National Book Award in 1980 and was made into a film starring Robin Williams that earned Academy Award nominations for John Lithgow and Glenn Close.

Since Garp's release, all of Irving's novels (including A Son of the Circus, A Prayer for Owen Meany, A Widow for One Year, The Fourth Hand and Until I Find You) have been translated into over 30 languages and sold tens of millions of copies. His novel, The Cider House Rules, was turned into a movie in 1999 that won him the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.

Irving has won the O. Henry Award and awards from the Rockefeller Foundation, the NEA and the Guggenheim Foundation. In 1992 Irving was inducted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame in Stillwater, Oklahoma and in 2001 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.