Author Clay McLeod Chapman will Speak at the Poe Museum

Join author Clay McLeod Chapman on Wednesday, October 15 at 6P.M. at the Poe Museum for an evening of reading and performance from a variety of his works. After the reading, he will be signing copies of his books. This event is part of the Virginia Literary Festival. Click here to learn more about the festival and its schedule of events.

More about the Author:
“Like a demonic angel on a skateboard, like a resurrected Artaud on methadrine, like a tattletale psychiatrist turned rodeo clown, Clay McLeod Chapman races back and forth along the serrated edges of everyday American madness, objectively recording each whimper of anguish, each whisper of skewed desire. This is strong stuff, intense stuff, sometimes disturbing stuff, but I think the many who admire Chuck Palahniuk will admire Chapman as well.” —Tom Robbins, author, Still Life with Woodpecker

Clay McLeod Chapman is the author of rest area, a collection of short stories, and miss corpus, a novel. Miss corpus was recognized in part of The New Yorker’s “Reading Glasses” series. Currently, he is writing the middlegrade adventure series The Tribe (Disney/Hyperion)—book one, Homeroom Headhunters, is out now and book two, Camp Cannibal, hits the shelves in April 2014. He also writes for his geek-gods Marvel Comics (Amazing Spider-Man, Ultimate Spider-Man Adventures, Spider-Man 2099 and The Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes) and Fangoria Magazine.

Chapman’s story the battle of belle isle was featured in Akashic Books’ regional-noir anthology Richmond Noir. He was a contributing author on “The Rolling Darkness Revue,” a roaming reading-series of horror writers created by Glen Hirshberg and Pete Atkins, culminating in the anthology At The Sign of the Snowman’s Skull. He was a contributing author to One Ring Zero’s As Smart As We Are album, featuring such writers as Paul Auster and Jonathan Lethem.

Chapman’s story late bloomer was adapted into film by director Craig Macneill. An official selection at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival, the short won the audience award for Best Short at the Lake Placid Film Festival and the Brown Jenkins Award at the 12th Annual H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival. Their most recent collaboration, Henley, a short film based on the chapter “The Henley Road Motel” from his novel miss corpus, was an official selection at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. It was awarded Best Short Film at the 2011 Gen Art Film Festival and the 2011 Carmel Arts and Film Festival.

Upcoming feature films include The Boy, a full length version of Henley, produced by The Woodshed (Elijah Wood, Daniel Noah, and Josh C. Waller) and the sci-fried feature White Space.

Chapman is the creator of the rigorous storytelling session The Pumpkin Pie Show. In its ten-plus years of existence, it has performed internationally at the Romanian Theatre Festival of Sibiu, the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, the New York International Fringe Festival, the Winnipeg Fringe Festival, the Edmonton Fringe Festival, the Minnesota Fringe Festival, the Dublin-based thisisnotashop art space, IGNITE Festival, the Women Center Stage Festival and the Impact Theatre Festival. The Pumpkin Pie Show continues to perform in New York City annually with long-time scene-stealer Hanna Cheek.

Chapman has written the book for the musical Hostage Song with music and lyrics by Obie-winning Kyle Jarrow. He also wrote the book for SCKBSTD, a new musical with Grammy-winner Bruce Hornsby. He is the author of such plays as commencement, teaser cow, Julian, bar flies, lee’s miserables, No Exitway, duct-tape to family-time, redbird, jewish mothers, junta high, nested doll, the interstate and on, the cardiac shadow and volume of smoke. Stage versions of his short stories birdfeeder and undertow were selected for publication in The Best American Short Plays: 2007-2008 and 2009-2010 anthologies.
Chapman was educated at the North Carolina School of the Arts for Drama, the Burren College of Art, and Sarah Lawrence College. He currently teaches writing at The Actors Studio MFA Program at Pace University. Visit him at www.claymcleodchapman.com