Summary
Darrell Spencer was born in St. George, Utah, and grew up in Las Vegas, where he attended Las Vegas High School and UNLV. He earned his doctorate from the University of Utah in 1986 with A Woman Packing a Pistol, a collection of original short stories, and taught writing at Brigham Young University and Southern Utah University. While at Southern Utah University, he was the editor for the Black Ridge Review. He is currently a member of the English Department at Ohio University, where he is the Stocker Professor in Creative Writing. In 1991, his short story "Union Business" won the Lawrence Foundation Award for Fiction. Also in 1991, his short story "Song and Dance" was cited for recognition in The Pushcart Prize, Best American Short Stories, and Best of the West. In 1996, he won the Publication Award and the First Place Award in the Utah Arts Council's Original Writing Competition. He won the 1998-1999 Quarterly West Novella Competition, the 1998 Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction, and the 2004 Drue Heinz Literature Prize for Bring Your Legs With You. The Association for Mormon Letters recognized him with its short story award in 1993 for his Our Secret's Out collection and with its short fiction award in 2001 for Caution: Men in Trees. He received Individual Artist Fellowship grants from the Ohio Arts Council in 1999, 2005 and 2009. He was the Stocker Professor in Creative Writing at Ohio University from 2003-2008.