Fred Chappell (1936-2024)
Author and scholar Fred Chappell, 87, died January 5, 2024 in Greensboro NC. Chapell was an author of literary and weird fiction, best known in the field for his 1968 novel Dagon and for World Fantasy Award-winning stories “The Somewhere Doors ” (1991) and The Lodger (1993).
Fred Davis Chappell was born May 28, 1936 in Canton NC and attended Duke University. He spent 40 years as an English professor at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and was poet laureate of the state of North Carolina from 1997-2002.
His Greensboro series, set in rural North Carolina and incorporating legends and fantastic elements, began with I Am One of You Forever (1985) and continued with Brighten the Corner Where You Are (1989), Farewell, I’m Bound to Leave You (1996), and Look Back All the Green Valley (1999).
Other works of genre interest include The Inkling (1965), A Shadow All of Light, and book-length fantastic poem Castle Tzingal (1984). Some of his short fiction was collected in The Fred Chappell Reader (1987), More Shapes Than One (1991), Ancestors and Others (2009), and Fred Chappell: Masters of the Weird Tale (2015).
For more, see his entry in the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction.
