Friday, November 21 : Wally Lamb
Wally Lamb
Featured Author, Wally Lamb: Lamb’s first two novels, She’s Come Undone and I Know This Much Is True were # 1 New York Times bestsellers, NY Times Notable Books of the Year, and featured titles of Oprah’s Book Club.I Know This Much Is True was a Book of the Month Club main selection and a featured selection of the Bertelsman Book Club, the national book club of Germany. Lamb’s next three novels were also New York Times bestsellers. The Hour I First Believed explores chaos theory by interfacing several generations of a fictional Connecticut family with such nonfictional American events as the Civil War, the Columbine High School shootings, the Iraq War, and Hurricane Katrina. Wishin’ and Hopin’ takes a comedic look at the year 1964 through the eyes of Felix Funicello, a parochial school 5th grader and a distant cousin of the iconic Annette. Lamb’s fifth novel, We Are Water is an intricate, multi-voiced account of a New England family coming to terms with the past and one another during the first years of the Obama presidency. His latest novel, The River is Waiting is the propulsive story of a young father who, after an unbearable tragedy, reckons with the possibility of atonement for the unforgivable. Lamb is also the editor of the nonfiction anthologies Couldn’t Keep It to Myself: Testimonies from Our Imprisoned Sisters and I’ll Fly Away, collections of autobiographical essays which evolved from a writing workshop Lamb facilitated at Connecticut’s York Correctional Institute, a maximum-security prison for women. He served as a CDC volunteer at York from 1999 to 2019, and his work there was the focus of a 2004 segment on CBS-TV’s 60 Minutes.
Lamb is a Connecticut native who holds Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in teaching from UConn and an MFA in Writing degree from Vermont College. Lamb was in the ninth year of his twenty-five year career as a high school English teacher at his alma mater, the Norwich Free Academy, when he began to write fiction in 1981. From 1997 to 1999, he was an Associate Professor at the University of Connecticut, where he directed the English Department’s creative writing program.
Honors include a National Endowment for the Arts grant, the Connecticut Center for the Book’s Lifetime Achievement Award, the Connecticut Bar Association’s Distinguished Public Service Award, the Barnes and Noble “Writers for Writers” Award, the National Institute of Business/Apple Computers “Thanks To Teachers” award, and the 2010 Arts and Letters award from the YMCA of New York City among others.
Lamband his wife, Christine, have three sons and five grandchildren. They met as high school freshmen and have been married for 47 years.