John Winslow Irving (born John Wallace Blunt Jr.; March 2, 1942) is an American-Canadian novelist, short story writer, and screenwriter. His first novel, Setting Free the Bears, was published in 1968, when he was twenty-six. He competed as a wrestler for twenty years and coached wrestling until he was forty-seven.

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 Hotel New Hampshire (1981), The Cider House Rules (1985), A Prayer for Owen Meany (1989), and A Widow for One Year (1998), have been bestsellers. He won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay at the 72nd Academy Awards (1999) for his script of The Cider House Rules. Five of his novels have been adapted into films. Several of Irving's books and short stories have been set in and around New England, in fictional towns resembling Exeter, New Hampshire.

Irving has been nominated for a National Book Award three times—winning once, in 1980, for The World According to Garp. He received an O. Henry Award in 1981 for his short story "Interior Space." In 2013, he won a Lambda Literary Award for his novel In One Person. An international writer—his novels have been translated into more than thirty-five languages—John Irving lives in Toronto. His all-time best-selling novel, in every language, is A Prayer for Owen Meany.