Author
Wally Lamb
Birth Date
October 17, 1950
(75 Years)
Associated Country
United States
Wally Lamb is an American novelist, essayist, and educator known for his emotionally powerful fiction exploring family, identity, trauma, and personal redemption. Born in Norwich, Connecticut, Lamb worked as a teacher before achieving literary success, and his experiences working with students and ordinary people helped shape the compassionate, character-driven approach that defines much of his writing.
Lamb gained national recognition with his debut novel, She's Come Undone, which became a bestseller and was selected for Oprah's Book Club. He followed it with a series of acclaimed novels that established him as one of America's most respected contemporary storytellers. His work is celebrated for its psychological depth, memorable characters, and willingness to explore difficult subjects with empathy and honesty.
In addition to his fiction, Lamb has been actively involved in prison writing programs and has edited collections of writings by incarcerated women. Throughout his career, he has earned a devoted readership for his ability to create deeply human stories that examine resilience, forgiveness, and the complexities of family relationships.
Lamb gained national recognition with his debut novel, She's Come Undone, which became a bestseller and was selected for Oprah's Book Club. He followed it with a series of acclaimed novels that established him as one of America's most respected contemporary storytellers. His work is celebrated for its psychological depth, memorable characters, and willingness to explore difficult subjects with empathy and honesty.
In addition to his fiction, Lamb has been actively involved in prison writing programs and has edited collections of writings by incarcerated women. Throughout his career, he has earned a devoted readership for his ability to create deeply human stories that examine resilience, forgiveness, and the complexities of family relationships.
Books
The River Is Waiting 2025
Corby Ledbetter is struggling. New fatherhood, the loss of his job, and a growing secret addiction have thrown his marriage to his beloved Emily into a tailspin. And that’s before he causes the...
I'll Take You There 2016
I’ll Take You There centers on Felix, a film scholar who runs a Monday night movie club in what was once a vaudeville theater. One evening, while setting up a film in the projectionist booth, he’s...
We Are Water 2013
After 27 years of marriage and three children, Anna Oh—wife, mother, outsider artist—has fallen in love with Viveca, the wealthy Manhattan art dealer who orchestrated her success. They plan to wed in...
Wishin' and Hopin' 2009
Poignant and hilarious, with his latest story, Wishin' and Hopin', Wally Lamb takes a turn toward the lighthearted and laugh-provoking. In a vein similar to Jean Shepherd’s A Christmas Story and David...
When 47-year-old high school teacher Caelum Quirk and his younger wife, Maureen, a school nurse, move to Littleton, Colorado, they both get jobs at Columbine High School. In April 1999, in a story set...
Dominick Birdsey, a forty-year-old housepainter living in Three Rivers, Connecticut, finds his subdued life greatly disturbed when his identical twin brother Thomas, a paranoid schizophrenic, commits...
She's Come Undone 1996
Meet Dolores Price. She’s thirteen, wise-mouthed but wounded, having bid her childhood goodbye. Beached like a whale in front of her bedroom TV, she spends the next few years nourishing herself with...