December 22, 1935

Author Donald Harington was born in Little Rock (Pulaski County). Entertainment Weekly described Harington as “America’s greatest unknown writer.” His more than fifteen books brought him critical recognition but little in the way of commercial success. His novels, usually set in the fictional Ozark town of Stay More, make up an interconnected body of fiction not unlike William Faulkner’s works about Yoknapatawpha County. Critics have seen in his work the influences of other major world writers such as Gabriel García Márquez and Vladimir Nabokov. In his works, Harington combined the folklore and folk life of the Ozark region with modernist and postmodernist techniques to create works that mix sex, comedy, and violence.