Before working as a corrections officer in Rutland, Vermont, Wayne Harrison was an auto mechanic for six years in Waterbury, Connecticut. A first-generation college student, he began in his mid twenties as a criminal justice major before getting turned on to creative writing by mentor and friend Jeffrey Greene. He later received an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. His fiction has been featured on NPR’s All Things Considered. His short stories appear in Best American Short Stories 2010, The Atlantic, Narrative Magazine, McSweeney’s, Ploughshares, Crazyhorse, The Sun, Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art, FiveChapters, New Letters and other magazines. One story was Notable in Best American 2009 and one received special mention in Pushcart Prizes 2012. His fiction has earned a Maytag fellowship, an Oregon Literary fellowship and a Fishtrap Writing Fellowship. He teaches writing at Oregon State University. His first novel, The Spark and the Drive, will be published by St. Martin's Press in July 2014. Advance praise for The Spark and the Drive: "Young men will always idolize the father substitutes who promise them a way out of the familiar. Ever volatile, such relationships fuel some of our best literature, and to this category we must now add Wayne Harrison's gorgeous and grittily poetic debut novel. Set in an auto shop in working class Connecticut at the end of the golden age of the American muscle car, The Spark and the Drive has all the horsepower and headlong beauty of the extraordinary machines at its center." – Ann Packer, best-selling author of The Dive from Clausen’s Pier and Swim Back to Me "This novel vividly renders the cult-like world of muscle car enthusiasts, but the author's ultimate concerns are the sparks and misfires of the human heart. Wayne Harrison is an exciting new voice in American fiction." – Ron Rash, best-selling author of The Cove and Serena "Wayne Harrison knows, like no one I’ve ever read before, how to describe what goes on underneath the hood of a car. But more, much more, he knows what goes underneath our skins. He knows all about our deepest desires and what we’ll do to attain them. The Spark and the Drive is as intense and well-written a love story as you’ll find. I’ll be in the grip of Justin's – and Mary Ann’s – story for months to come." – Peter Orner, award-winning author of Esther Stories and Love and Shame and Love