Jack Ketchum (1946-2018)
Dallas Mayr, 71, who wrote horror as Jack Ketchum, died January 24, 2018 in New York. He had cancer. Ketchum was named a World Horror Grand Master in 2011, and won a Bram Stoker Award for life achievement in 2015.
Dallas William Mayr was born November 10, 1946 in Livingston NJ. He attended Emerson College in Boston, earning a BA in English, and taught high school for two years. He also worked as an actor, a literary agent (briefly representing Henry Miller), a lumber salesman, and a soda jerk, among other occupations. As a teenager he made contact with Robert Bloch, who acted as his mentor for many years. Early in his career he also wrote as Jerzy Livingston. He wrote about his life in memoir Book of Souls (2008).
His debut novel Off Season appeared in 1980, and he went on to publish more than 20 books, among them Hide and Seek (1984), The Girl Next Door (1989), Offspring (1991), Road Kill (1994), Stoker Award finalist The Lost (2001), Red (2002), and The Secret Life of Souls (2016, with Lucky McKee). Several of his novels formed the basis for films, including The Lost (2006), The Girl Next Door (2007), Red (2008), Offspring (2009), and The Woman (2011).
He authored scores of short stories, including Stoker Award winners “Closing Time” (2003), “Gone” (2000), and “The Box” (1994), and finalists Right to Life (1999) and “The Haunt” (2001). Novella I’m Not Sam (2012, with Lucky McKee) was a finalist for Stoker and Shirley Jackson Awards. His short work was collected in numerous volumes, including Stoker Award winner Peaceable Kingdom (2003).
