Mark Harris
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- This article is about the author. For the 19th-century political figure, see Mark Harris (politician).
Dr. Mark Harris (born November 19, 1922 in Mount Vernon, New York) is an American author, novelist and educator, best known for a quartet of baseball novels: The Southpaw (1953); Bang the Drum Slowly (1956); A Ticket for a Seamstitch (1957) and It Looked Like Forever (1979). Written in the vernacular, the books are the account of Henry "Author" Wiggen, a pitcher for the New York Mammoths. Bang the Drum Slowly has been twice filmed, with Harris himself writing the screenplay for the second adaptation.
After serving in the Armed Forces during World War II, Harris worked as a journalist in New York, St. Louis and Chicago, before enrolling as an English major at the University of Denver, from where he received his Master's Degree in 1951. His first completed novel Trumpet to the World, was published in 1946, and he has continued to produced novels and journalism throughout his life. He obtained a Ph.D in American Studies from the University of Minnesota in 1956, and went on to teach at San Francisco State College (1954-68), Purdue University ('67-70), California Institute of the Arts ('70-73), the University of Southern California ('73-75), the University of Pittsburgh ('76-80), and Arizona State University (from 1980).