The Inkling by Fred Chappell is, says the New York Times, "A work of genuine talent…. Chappell writes with power and passion and with flashes of humor."This early novel of Chappell's takes sixteen-year-old Jan to where we often try to go—the place where all is right just before it goes wrong. The novel begins and ends with Jan's vision in just that place and with his searing pain of ignorance and failure. Chappell gives us characters for tragedy: a mother, bere...

Wonderfully funny and also deeply touching, I Am One of You Forever is the story of a young boy's coming of age. Set in the hills and hollows of western North Carolina in the years around World War II, it tells of ten-year-old Jess and his family -- father, mother, grandmother, foster brother, and an odd assortment of other relatives -- who usher Jess into the adult world, with all its attendant joys and sorrows, knowledge and mystery.Jess's father is feisty, restless, and fun-lovin...

Yellow light filled the attic. The light locked with the dust—tons of dust up here—and the atmosphere of the place stuffed his head like a fever. It seemed that he perceived this light with every nerve of his body. The attic was mostly empty but toward the south wall was a queer arrangement of chains; the ends dangled about seven feet from the floor and had broad iron bands attached. The bands were hinged on one side so they could open and shut. The chains looked red in the yellow l...

A good thief barters in goods. A great one deals in shadows.A Shadow All of Light is a stylish, elegant, episodic fantasy novel by World Fantasy Award–winning author and former poet laureate Fred Chappell.This stylish, episodic fantasy novel is for fans of epic fantasies and heists. The tale follows the exploits of Falco, a young man from the country, who arrives in the port city of Tardocco with the ambition of becoming an apprentice to a m...

In his final book, the celebrated poet Fred Chappell reflects on life and the beyond. Details drawn from daily actions, religion, classical myth, and the Appalachian landscape adorn this autumnal collection that unearths connections both strong and tenuous among apparently disparate subjects, all percolated with Chappell’s signature wit and warm vision. A student’s observation that “Poems are how we see with our eyes closed” comes to resemble an icon of sorrow. A stairway to heaven ends wi...

An Anthology Showcasing the Brilliant Versatility of Acclaimed American Author Fred ChappellThe Fred Chappell Reader is an anthology that bears witness to the remarkable scope of Fred Chappell's career, featuring a rich body of narrative and lyrical fictions ranging over history, mythology, science, philosophy, and Chappell's own life. Recognized as a storyteller "to put on the shelf with Mark Twain, William Faulkner, and Eudora Welty" by The Washington Pos...

These thirteen tales are populated by an assortment of fictional as well as real characters, all of them vividly sketched and true-to-life: the botanist Linnaeus, the composer Offenbach, the poet Hart Crane, the visionary horror writer H. P. Lovecraft, a southern sheriff, a dealer in rare books, a country singer, an old maid (and her suitor), and a mathematician. Whether these stories are deemed disquieting, comic, prophetic, or tall in the telling, they show us worlds where the truth reve...

One of our most acclaimed and versatile authors, Fred Chappell is comfortably at home in fiction, poetry, and literary criticism. A Way of Happening gathers his essays and reviews of contemporary poetry. Chappell consider new writers as well as more established authors, including Alfred Corn, William Matthews, A. R. Ammons, Linda Pastan, Julia Randall, Cornelius Eady, Alan Shapiro, and many others. And there are essays on the plight of the critic ("Thanks but No Thanks") and the delicate r...

In this sharply innovative collection, renowned poet Fred Chappell layers words and images to create a new and dramatic poetic form—the poem-within-a-poem. Like the shadow box in the volume’s title, each piece consists of an inner world contained, framed, supported by an outer—the two interdependent, sometimes supplementary, often contrary. For example, the grim but gorgeous “The Caretakers” is a landscape that reveals another image inside it. Chappell also introduces sonnets in which the ...

Brighten the Corner Where You Are is the riveting story of a day in the life of Joe Robert Kirkman, a North Carolina mountain schoolteacher, sly prankster, country philosopher, and family man.This novel from award-winning author Fred Chappell has won the hearts of readers and reviewers across the country.

Violence and sex in a small Southern city. Arkie, Clemmie, Oxie, and Johns are linked by a schoolboy's prank. Arkie, Clemmie, and Oxie are three of a kind: cons who grub for small change. They have no history and no future. Johns is their counterpart in a brighter universe. His thievery is sanctioned because he's Family in a small Southern city. Arkie: Suddenly it occurred to him that this street, Gimlet Street, could take you anywhere in the world, it was joined to all th...

Moments of Light Foreward by Annie Dillard. These stories prove that the mythic powers of the balladeer and the story teller survive even in this fragmented and unmysterious day. In the eleven stories gathered here, Fred Chappell engages and entertains our minds and sends us away singing in our hearts, more knowing, more understanding of ourselves. Fred Chappell's voice is sure and his vision is keen. As Annie Dillard writes in the foreword: "These are living, vivid n...