Biography of Mark Spencer

When Mark Spencer was a small boy growing up on a farm in southern Ohio, he believed hidden cameras recorded him at play and then broadcast the footage to a world-wide audience fascinated with his every move. He remembers thinking he was famous, like Elvis.

His memory of this delusion was the basis for his first published short story. To date, he has published two novels, Love and Reruns in Adams County (Fawcett Columbine/Random House) and The Weary Motel (Backwaters Press), as well as two collections of short stories and dozens of short stories, novellas, and articles in a variety of national and international journals. His work has received the Faulkner Society Faulkner Award, the Omaha Prize for the Novel, The Cairn/St. Andrews Press Short Fiction Award, the Bradshaw Book Award, and four Special Mentions in Pushcart Prize.

About Wedlock:

"…a new voice worth listening to, odd and endearing and immensely likeable."—Publishers Weekly

"Highly recommended."—W.P. Kinsella (author of Shoeless Joe), Vancouver Sun

"Taut, tense and tantalizingly under control."—Wichita Eagle

"This young writer's style is as lean and mean as his subject. Wedlock is art!"—Gordon Weaver, recipient of the First Prize O. Henry Award

"…a stunning debut, revealing Mark Spencer as a multifaceted serious talent and a colorful tale-spinner as well."—Small Press

About Love and Reruns in Adams County:

"Mark Spencer has made an impressive debut as a novelist. Let's hope he has more like it coming—a lot more."—The Dallas Morning News

"Spencer's memorable, often endearing characters persevere.... These are ordinary people with an extraordinary amount of humanity."—The Lexington Herald Leader

"…a dandy…you care about these people."—The Sunday Oklahoman

"What could be more valuable than a novelist who can make epic small moments in the lives of ordinary people?"—Philip F. O'Connor, author of Stealing Home

"The lives he touches with calm love and deliberation are those we know from our daily lives, all of whom are more mythic than not, longing for the good life and having trouble finding it."—Jim Barnes, recipient of the American Book Award

About The Weary Motel:

"‘People need to do things sometimes just so they can feel alive,’ [the main character's] brother tells her, and we witness again and again the awful truth of these words in this novel, whose author displays both a clear, comic voice and a sharp eye for the sad, inescapable predicaments of life."—from the Judge's Statement for The Faulkner Society Faulkner Award

"A novel that is, by turns, comic and touching,"—from the Judge's Statement for The Omaha Prize for The Novel

Graceland is not the first time Mark has evoked Elvis themes, Elvis' name, or Elvis himself in fiction. Here's a list of Mark's "Elvis" titles:

• The Weary Motel, novel (Backwaters Press, 2000).
• "American Idol Finale," short story in Ramble Underground (Winter 2009).
• "Healer," short story in Bewildering Stories (May 2007).
• "The King," short story in Bewildering Stories (March 2006).
• "Why Big Foot Is a Recluse," in The Chariton Review (Fall 2002).

Mark is Professor of English and Dean of the School of Arts and Humanities at the University of Arkansas at Monticello. He, his wife, and their sons, Joshua and Jacob, live in The Allen House, which for more than half a century has been well known as one of the most haunted houses in America.