A Little Rock native published more than fifteen books but was described as “America’s greatest unknown writer.” Donald Harington was born in the capital in 1935 but spent summers with his grandparents in Madison County; their home at Drakes Creek inspired his fictional town of Stay More.
Many of Harington’s novels combine Ozark folk life with modernist and post-modernist techniques. His first, The Cherry Pit, was published in 1965 and his last, Enduring, saw print in 2009. The seminal work in the Stay More series was 1975’s The Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks and he published Let Us Build Us A City: Eleven Lost Towns in 1986, the same year he joined the University of Arkansas faculty.
He won the Robert Penn Warren fiction award in 2003 and the Porter Prize Lifetime Achievement Award a year later. Though he had dedicated fans and received considerable critical acclaim, Harington never found either a consistent publish or commercial success. He died in 2009.
To learn more, visit encyclopediaofarkansas.net.
