Dennis Covington (born October 30, 1948) is an American author whose work includes two novels and four nonfiction books. His subject matter includes spirituality, the environment, and the South. Covington's book Salvation on Sand Mountain was a 1995 National Book Award finalist and his articles have been published in The New York Times, Vogue and Redbook.
Covington was born in Birmingham, Alabama, studied fiction writing and earned a BA degree from the University of Virginia, then served in the U.S. Army. He earned an MFA in the early 1970s from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, studying under Raymond Carver. He taught English at the College of Wooster. He married his second wife, writer Vicki Covington, in 1977. The couple returned to Birmingham the following year, and he began teaching at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. The couple divorced in 2005. They have two daughters and three grandchildren.
In 1983, Dennis Covington went to El Salvador as a freelance journalist. In 2003, he became Professor of Creative Writing at Texas Tech 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.In November 2017, Covington started his column called “Deep in the Heart,” published online by The American Scholar. He wrote a total of 20 mini-essays on life in Texas, family, lost love, health issues, and his childhood in Alabama. Covington’s essays were well-received.