Born in Canton, North Carolina and educated at Duke University, Fred Chappell has written 14 books of verse, two volumes of stories, one of criticism and eight novels. Mr. Chappell began teaching in the Department of English at UNC-Greensboro in 1964. He also writes about poetry every month as a News & Observer book columnist. Link here for more biographical information.

Mr. Chappell's major literary honors include the following:

1999, the Leila Lenore Heasley Prize, presented by Lyon College

1997, named North Carolina Poet Laureate by Governor James B. Hunt, Jr.

1996, the Aiken Taylor Award in Modern American Poetry, which is presented by the Sewanee Review

1993, the T.S. Eliot Award for Creative Writing from the Ingersoll Foundation in Rockford, Ill.

1986, recipient of the O. Max Gardner Award, the highest honor the University of North Carolina system can bestow on a faculty member

1985, joint recipient of the Bollingen Prize in Poetry of the Yale University Library

1972, the Prix de Meilleur du Livre Etranger from the Academie Francaise, naming the novel Dagon the best foreign book of the year

Mr. Chappell's new novel, Look Back All the Green Valley, was published in 1999. A new collection of poems, Family Gathering, is in the works. His most recent book of poetry, Spring Garden: New and Collected Poems, was released in 1995. His essays on poetry and criticism have been collected in two books, Plow Naked (1993) and A Way of Happening (1999).

Mr. Chappell's work has received wide critical recognition. In 2000, the University of South Carolina Press will publish John Lang's volume, Understanding Fred Chappell. His poems are the subject of a book of essays, Dream Garden: The Poetry of Fred Chappell, released recently by LSU Press. He received the 1990 Thomas H. Carter Prize for the Essay given by Shenandoah, the literary review of Washington and Lee University. In 1983, three prominent literary journals devoted issues to his work. They are Mississippi Quarterly: The Journal of Southern Culture, Kentucky Poetry Review, and Abatis One, the literary magazine of the humanities division of the University of Tampa.

Mr. Chappell has received numerous other awards for his writing, including the Sir Walter Raleigh Prize, the state's highest literary honor for fiction, and the North Carolina Award for Literature. He has received six Roanoke-Chowan Poetry Awards from the North Carolina Literary and Historical Society. His stories have been included six times in Best American Short Stories. One of them, "The Somewhere Doors," was given the World Fantasy Award in 1992. He has received honorary degrees from the University of North Carolina at Asheville and Spring Hill College.

Mr. Chappell's poetry books include:

Spring Garden: New and Collected Poems (1995)

C (1993)

First and Last Words (1989)

Source (1985)

Castle Tzingal (1984)

The World Between the Eyes (1971)

Awakening to Music (1979)

Midquest (1981), a tetralogy which collected four of his works: River (1975), Bloodfire (1978), Wind Mountain (1979) and Earthsleep (1980)

His novels are:

Look Back All the Green Valley (1999)

Farewell, I'm Bound to Leave You (1996)

Brighten The Corner Where You Are (1989)

I Am One of You Forever (1985)

The Gaudy Place (1972)

Dagon (1968)

The Inkling (1965)

It Is Time, Lord (1963)

His books of short stories are:

Moments of Light (1980)

More Shapes Than One (1991)

A collection of his writing, The Fred Chappell Reader, was published in 1987.

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