13 Facts About Wally Lamb

Wally Lamb was the director of the Writing Center at Norwich Free Academy in Norwich from 1989 to 1998 and has taught Creative Writing in the English Department at the University of Connecticut.

Wally Lamb's father Walter was superintendent of the Gas Department of Norwich, Department of Public Utilities while his mother Anna was a homemaker.

Wally Lamb began writing in 1981, the year he became a father.

Wally Lamb's first published stories were short fictions that appeared in Northeast, a Sunday magazine of the Hartford Courant.

For 25 years, Wally Lamb taught English and writing at the Norwich Free Academy, a regional high school that was his alma mater.

From 1997 to 1999, Wally Lamb was an Associate Professor in the English Department at the University of Connecticut.

From 1999 to 2019, Wally Lamb facilitated a writing program for incarcerated women at the York Correctional Institute, Connecticut's only women's prison in Niantic, Connecticut.

Wally Lamb's writing program at York Prison produced two collections of his inmate students' autobiographical writing, Couldn't Keep It to Myself: Testimonies from Our Imprisoned Sisters and I'll Fly Away: Further Testimonies from the Women of York Prison, both of which Wally Lamb edited.

Wally Lamb says Joseph Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces and other anthropological analyses of the commonalities of ancient myths from diverse world cultures helped him to figure out the ways in which stories, ancient and modern, can illuminate the human condition.

Wally Lamb has stated that he is influenced by pop culture and artists who work in other media.

Wally Lamb's writing awards include grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Connecticut Commission on the Arts, the Connecticut Center for the Book's Lifetime Achievement Award, selections by Oprah's Book Club and Germany's Bertelsmann Book Club, the Pushcart Prize, the New England Book Award for Fiction, and New York Times Notable Books of the Year listings.

Wally Lamb has received Honorary Doctoral Degrees from several colleges and universities and was awarded Distinguished Alumni awards from Vermont College of Fine Arts and the University of Connecticut.

Wally Lamb is married and has three sons, one of whom is a principal and Internet personality.