Mark Harris, son of Carlyle and Ruth Klausner Finkelstein, was born in Mount Vernon, New York, on 19 November 1922. He entered the United States Army in 1943 and served until 1944, when he received an honorable discharge after suffering from sustained, severe anxiety. Harris was employed primarily as a reporter between 1943 and 1950, the year he received a B.A. in English from the University of Denver. He has worked for the Daily Item in Port Chester, New York (1944-1945); PM, New York (1945), and the International News Service, St. Louis (1945-1946); and he wrote for the Negro Digest and Ebony in Chicago (1946-1951). He met Josephine Horen in October 1945, and they were married in Illinois on 17 March 1946. Mark and Josephine Harris have three children: Hester Jill, Anthony Wynn, and Henry Adam.

Mark Harris wrote his first novel, Trumpet to the World (1946), before he started his undergraduate career at Denver and had to...