Hi, I’m MARK.
Although I’ve published more than a dozen short stories over the years (and am currently putting together a collection), Loss of Life will be my first published novel.
Two very significant things happened this past December, about a week apart: I officially retired from my position as associate director of the MA in Writing Program at Johns Hopkins University, and Jodie notified me that Legacy Book Press wanted to publish my novel.
Occasionally I find myself wondering what’s the lesson learned from writing and teaching writing for more than forty years, and then, at such an “advanced” age, having your first novel published.
All I can come up with is: it’s never too late.’
about mark
When I ask myself why, or how I got to this place, I come up with answers such as, “I finally got out of my own way,” or “I stopped caring so much about what other people might think of me.” I suspect it’s those things and many others as well.
Mark Farrington has been a teacher and writer for more than forty years.
Since the late 1990’s, he has taught in the MA in Writing Program at Johns Hopkins University, moving from adjunct professor to assistant director to director of the program. In 2016, he also became director of the MA in Teaching Writing Program. He retired from his full-time position in 2024, although he continues to teach two or three fiction writing courses each year.
Farrington grew up in the Berkshires of western Massachusetts, earned his BA in English and American Literature from Colby College and an MFA in Fiction Writing from George Mason University. He has also taught at George Mason and Mary Washington University. His short fiction has appeared in many literary journals, including CARVE, Craft Literary, and theValparaiso Review, and has won an Individual Artists Grant from the Virginia Commission on the Arts, as well as other awards. His first novel, Loss of Life, will be available from Legacy Book Press in June, 2026.
In May, 2025, Farrington, his wife Christina, and their Springer Spaniel Maddie moved from Alexandria, Virginia to Portland, Maine, where they live a short walk from a park that looks out over a cove.