Wallace did not graduate from college until May 2008, instead taking a job with a trading company in Nagoya, Japan.

"[3] He reports, however, that there was friction within his family, as in an interview he states: My father wanted me to work with him in his company, an import/export firm, and to that end I lived in Japan for a couple of years.

[3]After returning to Chapel Hill, Wallace worked for thirteen years in a bookstore and as an illustrator, where he designed greeting cards and refrigerator magnets.

He continued to live in Chapel Hill with his wife, Laura, a social worker,[3] and their son, Henry.

"[3] Wallace claims he is an agnostic in terms of religious beliefs,[3] stating: I think a lot of people default to Jesus when something inexplicable happens.

A similar thing happens when a tornado blows someone’s house away, but their cat is found unscathed in an oak tree: God must have been looking out for Pooky.

[4] Since then, his books have been translated into 18 languages, while Big Fish was made into a film by Tim Burton.

[5] In a 2011 article for Pure Movies, he wrote about how absurd he found it that Big Fish was the book that was adapted into a film when all his others have clearer narrative structures.

His short stories have been published in a number of anthologies and magazines, including The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror.

I wrote three hundred pages about a pair of billionaire twins, each weighing just over 500 pounds, who ‘rent’ the mistress of one of their friends.

[3] Wallace lists his favorite writers as Franz Kafka, Vladimir Nabokov, Italo Calvino, Kurt Vonnegut, and William Faulkner.

[7] Wallace currently is a professor and lecturer in the English Department at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.