Fred Chappell
(Did you mean Fred A. Chappell, the bibliographer?)
(May 28, 1936 – January 4, 2024[1])
Fred Davis Chappell, a North Carolina author and poet, was active in fandom as a teenager in the 1950s. He was a member of the N3F and TLMA and director of the the Western North Carolina Scientafantesy League — “the WNCSFL ... boasted only it's director, a secratery, a tresrur, and one membar, but they were all in realty only Chappell himself.”[2]
In Nolacon II’s PR 1 (Spring 1987, p. 16), Chappell recalled traveling to his first convention, Nolacon, the 1951 Worldcon, in company with Lynn Hickman and Bobby Pope, saying he gafiated about three years later when he went to college, although he was contributing to fanzines as late as 1958. He wrote reviews, poetry and fan fiction for such zines as Redd Boggs’ Skyhook, Dean Grennell’s Grue and Bob Silverberg’s Spaceship. He may also have attended Philcon II in 1953, according to his sister.[3]
As a young man, Chappell claimed, he sold a couple of stories to the pulps under a pseudonym, which he did not divulge. His 1968 novel Dagon, named the Best Foreign Book of the Year by the Académie française, is a recasting of a Cthulhu Mythos horror story as a psychologically realistic Southern Gothic.
Born in Canton, NC, in rural Appalachia, Chappell grew up on a farm there, then attended Duke University, where he studied under William Blackburn. He married Susan Nicholls in 1959. He was a professor of English, 1964–2004, at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. From 1997–2002, he was the Poet Laureate of North Carolina. Fred Chappell: I Am One of You Forever, a biographical documentary about him, aired on PBS November 3, 2022.
- Entry in The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction.
- Entry at The Poetry Foundation.
- “The Goldfish Bowl” by Fred Chappell (a review of The Immortal Storm by Sam Moskowitz), Grue 29 (May 1958, p. 32).
- Obituary, Asheville Citizen Times, January 10, 2004.
- Obituary, Locus, January 11, 2024.
Awards, Honors and GoHships:
- 1992 — World Fantasy Award for Best Short Story for “The Somewhere Doors”
- 1994 — World Fantasy Award for Best Short Story for “The Lodger”
- 1999 — NecronomiCon, 4th Edition
- 2002 — Trinoc*coN 2002 special guest
- Many mundane literary awards
See also: Celebrity Fen.
____
- ↑ Date of death per Asheville Citizen Times. There are conflicting reports.
- ↑ From Grue 29 (May 1958, p. 34).
- ↑ In Fred Chappell: I Am One of You Forever (2022).
| Person | 1936—2024 |
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