The death of Fred Chappell on Jan. 4 at age 87 snatched from us one of the great literary figures of our age.

The title of North Carolina Poet Laureate, which he received in 1997, was only one of the more recent regional honors bestowed on this lifetime North Carolinian. Fred enjoyed considerable recognition for his belletristic accomplishments, including the Yale Bollingen Prize for Poetry, the Aiken Taylor Award for Modern American Poetry, and the North Carolina Award for Literature.

Fred’s novel Dagon obtained for its author the best foreign book award from the Académie Francaise. A longtime fixture at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where he taught since the 1960s, and a proud resident of that North Carolina community, Professor Chappell had deep roots in the South that he never denied. He was also someone who combined that regional identity with vast learning and a literary reputation that extended across the Western world. In the words of the well-known novelist William Styron, Fred was “an immensely gifted, exuberant, versatile writer who should be ranked among our important contemporary voices.” 

We might also note that Fred was a longtime contributor to Chronicles and a close friend of our former editor-in-chief, Tom Fleming. He also was, to the credit of Chronicles’ Rockford Institute, a recipient of the T. S. Eliot Award sponsored by Rockford and the Ingersoll Foundation. Our editors mourn the loss of a onetime collaborator as well as the passing of an internationally known literary light.