- Stephen King wrote about him, "Ketchum has become a kind of hero to those of us who write tales of terror and suspense.".
- Sold a number of early short stories under the pseudonym "Jerzy Livingston," based on the town in which he grew up, Livingston, New Jersey.
- Before becoming a full-time writer, he worked as a garbage-man, a lumber salesman, a copywriter, editor of the paleontological magazine "Fossils," and as a literary agent for Scott Meredith, Inc., where he served as agent for author Henry Miller.
- He worked in theater, first as a drama reviewer, then in New York's off-off-Broadway. A theater company produced a few of Ketchum's one-act plays (two of which he directed) in summer stock repertory.
- Ketchum's short story "The Box" won a 1994 Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in Short Fiction; another, "Gone," won the same award in 2000, and "The Haunt" was nominated in 2002.
- His handsome face has often been compared with that of Willem Dafoe.
- Once told an interviewer that his favorite horror writer was Herman Melville, for his 1851 novel "Moby-Dick.".
- His first novel, "Off Season," was hated by reviewers (the liberal New York newspaper "The Village Voice" titled its review "YECCH!"), but loved by fans. "Off Season: The Unexpurgated Version" was published as a hardcover in 1999 with an introduction by renowned writer-scholar Douglas E. Winter.
- Dallas chose his pseudonym based on the Texan outlaw Thomas "Black Jack" Ketchum (1863-1901).
- Ketchum earned a B.A. in English from Emerson College in Boston, and later taught high school in Brookline, Massachusetts, for two years.
- His first job was working in his father's shop in Livingston, NJ. The store, "The Sugar Bowl," was a luncheonette and soda fountain which sold groceries as well as magazines, paperback books, newspapers, and comics. Jack Ketchum would arrange and display the newspapers, magazines and comics. Ketchum helped at the family store through his teen years, as a short-order cook in the mornings and as a soda jerk at night.
- He is the only child of Dallas William Mayr (1908-1997) and Evelyn Fahner Mayr (1915-1987), both of German immigrant stock and both of whom worked for the war effort during World War II. His mother served as an accountant and office manager; his father was an infantryman in artillery, firing bombs across the Rhine River in Europe.
- Jack Ketchum's short fiction has appeared in magazines such as Cemetery Dance and Weird Tales. It has also appeared in anthologies such as 'Bad News', 'October Dreams: A Celebration of Halloween', 'The Best of Cemetery Dance'. and 'Shivers'.
- To date (November 2010) Jack has published the following books: 'Off Season' 1980, 'Hide and Seek' (1984), Cover (1987), 'She Wakes' & 'The Girl Next Door'(1989), 'Offspring' (1991), 'Joyride' aka 'Roadkill' (1994), 'Stranglehold' aka 'The Girl Next Door' & 'Red' (1995), 'Ladies' Night' (1997), 'The Last Exit At Toledo Blade Boulevard' (1998), 'Right to Life' & 'Off Season: the Unexpurgated Edition' (1999), 'The Lost' (2001), 'Peaceable Kingdom' (2002), 'Sleep Disorder' (2003), 'The Crossings' (2004), 'Broken on the Wheel of Sex' (2006), 'Closing Time' (2007), 'Old Flames' & 'Triage' (2008), 'Book of Souls' (2008), 'The Woman' (2010). At lest five of these have been turned into motion pictures, and this slim but brilliant body of work encompasses the following aspects of genre literature: horror (most deal with subject matter that is horrific), crime, western ('The Crossings'), fantasy & supernatural ('She Wakes'), thrillers & serial killers ('The Lost'& 'Roadkill'). Some bring attention to horrific real-life events, most notably 'The Girl Next Door'.
- Narrated 10 pages from the legendary horror novel 'The Haunting of Hill House' by Shirley Jackson. The reading took place in Burlington, Massachusetts at the annual 'Shirley Jackson Awards for outstanding achievement in the literature of psychological suspense, horror, and the dark fantastic'. Matt Lee-Williams (July 2008)
Contribute to this page
Suggest an edit or add missing content