Donald Harington was born and raised in Little Rock, Arkansas. He spent nearly all of his early summers in the Ozark mountain hamlet of Drakes Creek. He knew at an early age that he wanted to be a writer, but also wanted to be a teacher. He has taught art history at a variety of colleges in New York, New England, South Dakota and finally at his alma mater, the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, where he lectured for approximately 22 years, until his retirement in 2008. Harington won the Porter Prize in 1987, the Heasley Prize at Lyon College in 1998, was inducted into the Arkansas Writers' Hall of Fame in 1999 and that same year won the Arkansas Fiction Award of Arkansas Library… Association. Many of this novels take place in the fictional town of Stay More, which is loosely based on Drakes Creek. Harington died in 2009.