Jack Ketchum
Birthday:
10 November 1946, Newark, New Jersey, USA
Birth Name:
Dallas William Mayr Jr.
Jack Ketchum published his first novel in 1980 titled "Off Season", a version of the Sawney Beane story. The novel was subsequently slated by the Village Voice as 'violent pornography' but, undeterred, the author continued to write fiction that deals with the cruelty and violence so often apparent in everyday life. Since the pub...
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Jack Ketchum published his first novel in 1980 titled "Off Season", a version of the Sawney Beane story. The novel was subsequently slated by the Village Voice as 'violent pornography' but, undeterred, the author continued to write fiction that deals with the cruelty and violence so often apparent in everyday life. Since the publication of "Off Season", he has released several successful novels including "She Wakes", "Cover", "Road Kill" (aka "Joyride"), "Only Child" (aka "Stranglehold"), "Ladies Night", and "Triage" (a collection of novellas) with fellow writers Richard Laymon and Edward Lee. In 1990 he published "Offspring", the sequel to "Off Season".Before becoming a full-time writer Jack had written and directed a handful of plays, worked as a teacher, a copywriter, and as literary agent for author Henry Miller, while working at Scott Meredith, Inc. His fiction - with the exception of "She Wakes" - has tended to eschew what is called traditional horror vampires, werewolves, the supernatural, monsters, and demons - andinstead has concentrated on more urban horror and real-life monsters.Jack has, so far, won the Bram Stoker Award for his short stories 'The Box' and 'Gone', and his collections "Closing Time" and "Peaceable Kingdom". 'The Box' first appeared in Cemetery Dance Magazine and the subsequent Cemetery Dance anthologies "The Best of Cemetery Dance" and "The Century's Best Horror Fiction". 'Gone' was further published by CD in the autumnal anthology "October Dreams: A Celebration of Halloween". Richard Chizmar is the founder and editor of CD Publications and has published much of Jack's body of work including the novels "The Lost" and "Hide and Seek", the dark western novella "The Crossings", and 'The Haunt', a short supernatural tale. The late Richard Laymon included Jack in his CD Publications editorial debut anthology "Bad News" with the story 'The Best'.Three of his most powerful novels have recently been turned into films. Red (2008) is a revenge story that deals with the subject of animal abuse and stars Tom Sizemore, Brian Cox, Amanda Plummer and Robert Englund of A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) fame. The Girl Next Door (2007) - based on actual events - tracks the abuse of two teenage sisters, and is based on the torture and murder of Sylvia Likens. The Lost (2006) is the story of a serial killer and features horror queen Dee Wallace of The Howling (1981), Stephen King's Cujo and Rob Zombie's Halloween (2007). He has also tried his hand at acting, taking small roles such as Teddy Panik in The Lost (2006) and Edward Lee's Header (2006). Other roles include a carnival worker in The Girl Next Door (2007), the bartender in Red (2008), and character Max Joseph in Offspring (2009). Jack appeared as himself in the documentary The Cult of Ichi (2007) with horror directors Lucky McKee and Scott Spiegel, and can be seen in The Making of 'The Girl Next Door' (2007) documentary.Stephen King is a fan of Jack Ketchum's work and contributed the introduction to the signed limited edition of "The Girl Next Door". King has called Jack the "scariest guy in America" The Girl Next Door (2007), and remarked that there is "a dark streak of genius" in Jack's work ("Road Kill"). King provided further praise for Jack's work during his own acceptance speech for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters Award, 2003: he called Jack and fellow writer, Peter Straub, pioneers of modern popular fiction, specifically citing Jack's dark western, "The Crossings".Ketchum's numerous short fiction is so far collected in "The Exit at Toledo Blade Boulevard", "Broken on the Wheel of Sex", "Peaceable Kingdom" and "Closing Time and Other Stories". These dark tales have featured in anthologies like "Imagination Fully Dilated" (1998), "Dark Dreamers" (2001), and "The Horror Hall of Fame: The Stoker Winners" (2011) edited by horror icon Joe R. Lansdale. His poetry has featured in anthologies like "The Devil's Wine" (2004) alongside Stephen King, Ray Bradbury, and Peter Straub.Jack Ketchum's fourth adaptation Offspring (2009) starred Jessica Butler and Art Hindle. It is set outside the town of Dead River and tells the tale of youngsters trying to survive the local cannibals who have been feeding on drifters for many years and is based on Jack's novels "Off Season" and "Offspring". His novel "Hide and Seek" is also set in and around the coastal town of Dead River, Maine.His novellas, "Weed Species" and "Old Flames", were published by Cemetery Dance Publications in 2006 and 2008 respectively. "The Woman" was released in 2010, co-written with Lucky McKee, the director of Ketchum's Red (2008).Jack Lives in New York, New York. Show less «
I hope I do [i.e., write about] victims pretty well. Because I proceed from them. For me the victim makes the story. Sometimes you victimize...Show more »
I hope I do [i.e., write about] victims pretty well. Because I proceed from them. For me the victim makes the story. Sometimes you victimize yourself, sometimes somebody does it to you, but it's that almost universal sense we have - we've all been hurt, and I like to open doors to those feelings. ... Everybody's broken. Some rise above it. These are the people I want to write about. A lot of my stuff is thinly-veiled wishes for empowerment for people I care about. Show less «
People *scare me*. And what they do to one another, just for fun sometimes, is appalling. There was a guy not too long ago, a guy and a woma...Show more »
People *scare me*. And what they do to one another, just for fun sometimes, is appalling. There was a guy not too long ago, a guy and a woman, whose dog wouldn't obey. So they tied him behind the car, and dragged him at thirty miles an hour until the dog was a bloody mess. So that's scary to me. Show less «
Everything influences my fiction. Conversations in bars, loves, losses of same, TV, movies, cocktail napkins, news clips, friends' confessio...Show more »
Everything influences my fiction. Conversations in bars, loves, losses of same, TV, movies, cocktail napkins, news clips, friends' confessions. I get permission, then I use it. Show less «
[re his novel "The Lost"] Everyone in the book is lost to some degree. Even the poor cat. But when I conceived it, I was thinking about thos...Show more »
[re his novel "The Lost"] Everyone in the book is lost to some degree. Even the poor cat. But when I conceived it, I was thinking about those kids in that ear who fell between the cracks, who neither went to war nor to college, and what an open, empty world was left to them. That, and how lost the entire era was. And again, you're right: loss is the entire theme. Nobody wins in this book. Even the survivors are diminished. Show less «
When I'm writing at my best, what I'm trying to do, I find, is to point out how some people poison the world for the rest of us, who are onl...Show more »
When I'm writing at my best, what I'm trying to do, I find, is to point out how some people poison the world for the rest of us, who are only trying to live humanely and lovingly. It's a warning against the "others," and a call to awareness, strength, and gentleness. Show less «
[on what makes a good horror story] I look for people. People who act like you and I might in desperate circumstances, and not like chess pi...Show more »
[on what makes a good horror story] I look for people. People who act like you and I might in desperate circumstances, and not like chess pieces. If you've got real individuals I can care about, only then can you scare me silly. Show less «
