Background
Covington was born in Birmingham, Alabama, studied fiction writing and earned a Bachelor degree from the University of Virginia, then served in the United States. Army.
Covington was born in Birmingham, Alabama, studied fiction writing and earned a Bachelor degree from the University of Virginia, then served in the United States. Army.
He earned an Master of Fine Arts in the early 1970s from the Iowa Writers" hop, studying under Raymond Carver.
His subject matter includes spirituality, the environment, and the South. and Redbook. He taught English at the College of Wooster. The couple returned to Birmingham the following year, and he began teaching at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
In 1983, Dennis Covington went to El Salvador as a freelance journalist.
In 2003, he became Professor of Creative Writing at Texas Technical University. In 2005, he was a judge for the National Book Awards.
Covington spoke at a talk hosted by the University of Central Florida"s literary magazine The Cypress Dome in 2009. From "Snake Handling and Redemption", The Art of Fact, Kevin Kerrane, Ben Yagoda, Simon and Schuster, 1998, From Salvation on Sand Mountain, The Oxford Book of the American South, Edward L. Ayers, Bradley C. Mittendorf, Oxford University Press United States, 1997, Salvation On Sand Mountain details “war stories” of people who lived to tell of their poisonous snake bites, and of those who did not survive.
Covington describes what led him to abandon snake handling during a wedding in Kingston, Georgia, where the writer discovered there’s a fine line in the world of snake-handling between faith and suicide.