“LOCAL SUCCESS STORIES”
from THE BEDFORD MINUTEMAN
4/20/06

by Mike Rosenburg

     “What does a hip, arty, self-interested and semi-committed couple in a closet-sized New York City apart-

ment do when they tire of their jaded lives? They decide to rescue a dog with ‘issues,’ of course. Canine turns

into guru and delightful mayhem ensues…”

     So begins the bookpage.com review of Bedford High School graduate Lee Harrington’s memoir. “Rex in the

City” was released by Random House on April 4, and life is accelerating for the author. “It has gotten about

seven good reviews and more are coming out. And I'm doing some radio interviews.” After some appearances

in New York this month, she’ll be touring bookstores, in the Boston area (maybe even the Great Road Shopping

Center’s Paper Store) and on the West Coast.

     “I'm very calm, which is nice,” Harrington commented. “I just think finishing the book -- that was the most

exciting part. This is the denouement, reaping the rewards of having written in a void for 10 years.” Well, not

literally a void. Harrington has been writing an award-winning humor column for a dog-lovers’ magazine called

The Bark since 2000.

     Harrington has fond memories of a childhood in “the town that everyone wants to have grown up in.” She

lived on Temple Terrace, and the love affair with dogs started early. “We had a dog named Tasha, a husky, and

those were the days in which all of the dogs of the neighborhood roamed around,” Harrington said. “You knew

them all, you knew their personalities. They just kind of made their rounds.”

     “I was just one of those kids who had a great faith in animals and a wariness of human beings. So I was just

really happy hugging my dog.”

     In Bedford, like in most small towns, “there was not a lot of stimulation to the imagination.” Nevertheless,

“one of my favorite things to do with my friends was, on a Saturday night, I would drive down Dudley Road

with my friends and listen to Led Zeppelin and visit the ‘nun’s tree.’ I loved that street. It was so romantic –

you were going back to another age.”

     Harrington still remembers when her junior high English teacher, Ben Maxwell, “was very enthusiastic

about a poem that I had written... I remember his red hair. We had an orange cat that we named Max, after

him.” Another English teacher, at BHS, “would read Jane Austen out loud, in an English accent. All the boys

would snicker at the teacher, but I was enthralled.”

     A lot of high school students are searchers, and Harrington was no exception. “I was always trying to find

my place in the world, my niche, trying to find something I knew I was supposed to be doing. I always sat next

to my friend Tony Stacchi, a stupendous artist. He was very inspiring. He had talent and he knew exactly what

he wanted to do.” Harrington said she also was committed to the visual arts.

     She graduated in 1982 and majored in studio art at UMass Amherst. After a few years of trying to make it as

an illustrator, Harrington entered the graduate writing program at Emerson College. As she reports in the third

person on her web site (emharrington.com), “There, she wrote a few horrid short stories that got ripped to

shreds in her creative writing workshops. But eventually she learned enough about technique and craft to write

stories that won awards.”

     After receiving her master’s, she moved to New York “along with 800,000 young writers, to try to make it

big.” It was discouraging. “I tried all these things. I had lots of jobs. I never liked them. Once you’re doing what

you’re born to do, there’s just a click, a rush of energy.” But she did get a dog, and began writing the column in

2000, a series also called “Rex in the City.”  And she discovered that “people just love to read about dogs.”

     Now that the book is on the street, Harrington is hearing from new fans. “That’s what is so great about

e-mail. They’ll read the book and then they’ll write you right away.” The book is available at major outlets,

over the counter and on line. There’s link on Harrington’s website to Amazon.com. “Or you can go to the Paper

Store and order 25 copies,” she laughed.

     “Everybody says New York is so stimulating, but a small quiet town is great for an artist, too,” she observed.

“You have to entertain yourself. You have to use your imagination.” These days Harrington is back in a small

town – Woodstock, NY, a couple of hours north of Manhattan. She is writing full-time now, including a sequel

to “Rex,” and a novel due to come out next year.” The author comes back to Bedford to visit her brother and

sister, David Hill and Deb Caban, “and they love my dog.”

     “A couple of years ago,” she mused, “I found this little diary from when I was 10 years old, a little leather

diary with a lock on it. And it said, ‘Someday, when I write my first novel....’ I guess I always wanted to be a

writer. I just didn’t remember.”