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. Some of Irving's novels, such as 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 to film. 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.
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). Irving was in the Phillips Exeter wrestling program both as a student athlete and as an assistant coach, and wrestling features prominently in his books, stories, and life. Irving's biological father, whom he never met–even if the latter was, from time to time and on purpose, attending his son's wrestling competitions–, had been a pilot in the Army Air Forces and during World War II was shot down over Burma in July 1943, but survived (an incident incorporated into the novel The Cider House Rules). Irving did not find out about his father's heroism until 1981.
John Irving (born 1942) is an American novelist and Academy Award-winning screenwriter.
John Irving may also refer to:
John Irving (1867 – 20 November 1942), also known as Johnnie or Johnny Irving, was a Scottish professional association footballer who scored 10 goals from 51 appearances in the Football League in the 1890s playing as an inside right for Lincoln City.
Irving was born in Dumfries in 1867. He played for home-town club Queen of the South Wanderers for two years before moving to England to join Lincoln City. He made his debut on 5 November 1889 in the Midland League, and played for the club until the 1894–95 season, their second in the Football League. In the 1890–91 season, Irving was the club's leading scorer, with 12 goals from Football Alliance and FA Cup games. He is believed to have been the first Lincoln player to be sent off in a Football League match: in November 1894, he and Grimsby Town's Tom Frith were dismissed for fighting.
After losing his first-team place, Irving moved on in February 1895 to Newark Town in the Midland League before returning to Lincoln City a few months later. His last game for their first team came in the Football League Second Division, a 3–0 defeat to Loughborough on 6 March 1897, and he retired as a player later that year. Over both spells with Lincoln, Irving scored 43 goals from 123 senior appearances.
John Goodison Irving (born 17 September 1988) is an English footballer who plays for Welsh club Bala Town, usually as a defender.
Born in Portsmouth then moved to Liverpool aged 2, Irving began his career at hometown club Everton in 1995. On 20 December 2007, he was named in the matchday squad for a 3–2 win at AZ Alkmaar in the UEFA Cup group stage after Everton had already advanced, but never played a competitive match.
Irving then moved to Bala Town of the Welsh Premier League, where he made 109 top-flight appearances across four seasons becoming their longest serving player, scoring 3 league goals. On 18 May 2013, in his final game for Bala, Irving scored the winner three minutes from time in the UEFA Europa League Play-off game against Port Talbot Town, which resulted in his team qualifying for their first ever European match, a year after losing the same fixture to Llanelli Town.
In 2013, Irving moved to New Zealand and joined semi-professional side Auckland City, freshly crowned champions of Oceania. At the 2013 FIFA Club World Cup in Morocco, he played the first 86 minutes of their 1–2 defeat to Raja Casablanca in the opening game at the Stade Adrar in Agadir.
John Irving (born 1839, date of death unknown) was a Union Navy sailor in the American Civil War and a recipient of the U.S. military's highest decoration, the Medal of Honor, for his actions at the Battle of Mobile Bay.
Born in 1839 in east Brooklyn, New York, Irving was still living in that state when he joined the Navy. He served during the Civil War as a coxswain on the USS Brooklyn. At the Battle of Mobile Bay on August 5, 1864, he "fought his gun with skill and courage" despite heavy fire. For this action, he was awarded the Medal of Honor four months later, on December 31, 1864.
Irving's official Medal of Honor citation reads:
John Irving (born May 24, 1953) is a retired American college basketball player best known for his career at Hofstra, which lasted from 1974–75 to 1976–77. He also spent one season (1972–73) at Arizona before transferring. Irving, a 6 ft 9 in (2.06 m), 215-lb (98 kg) power forward/center, recorded 1,018 points and 1,186 rebounds during his three-year career at Hofstra. He holds career per-game averages of 13.2 points and 15.4 rebounds at the school, and is the last Hofstra player to average a double-digit number of rebounds in three consecutive seasons. He led NCAA Division I in rebounding during his sophomore year of 1974–75 with a 15.3 per-game average. Irving was a member of two NCAA Tournament teams, and after he graduated was selected in the third round (58th overall) by the Detroit Pistons in the 1977 NBA draft, although he never played in the league. Previously, he was also selected by the Phoenix Suns in the ninth round (150th overall) in 1976. He is still only one of two players in Hofstra University history to accumulate both 1,000 points and 1,000 rebounds during his career (Bill Thieben is the other), and has been honored as an inductee in the school's Athletics Hall of Fame as part of the 2011 class.