On this episode, Kristin Harmel, Patti Callahan Henry & Mary Kay Andrews welcome this month’s F&F Featured Author, the internationally renowned, award-winning, NYT-bestselling author John Irving, to discuss our December 2025 Pick of the Month, Queen Esther, which returns us after forty years to the world of his bestselling classic novel and Academy Award-winning film, The Cider House Rules. John Irving is an icon of American letters and the acclaimed author of more than 20 books which have been translated into more than 35 languages. His works include the National Book Award winning cultural phenomenon The World According to Garp; The Cider House Rules, for which he won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay; The Hotel New Hampshire, a bestseller which was made into a film starring Jodie Foster; and A Prayer for Owen Meany which is his all-time bestselling novel in every language. A former competitive wrestler and wrestling coach, he is a member of the National Wrestling Hall of Fame. A dual citizen of the United States and Canada, John joins us from his home in Toronto to discuss Queen Esther which revisits the orphanage in St. Cloud’s, Maine, where Dr. Wilbur Larch takes in Esther, a Viennese-born Jew whose life is shaped by anti-Semitism.

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