SOURCE: Chappell, Fred, and Jennifer Howard. “Fred Chappell: From the Mountains to the Mainstream.” Publishers Weekly 243, no. 40 (30 September 1996): 55-6.

In the following interview, Chappell discusses his body of work and the critical response to his writing.

Fred Chappell may be the most modest man of letters the South has ever produced. With nearly 25 books under his belt, and the praise of critics and fellow writers ringing in his ears (William Styron has called him “an immensely gifted, exuberant, versatile writer who should be ranked among our important contemporary voices”), Chappell maintains a resolute humility about his career. To hear him talk, he owes it all to luck, persistence and the kindness of strangers.

Editors do have a habit of walking up to Chappell out of the blue and asking him if he has a manuscript they could see. His first novel, It Is Time, Lord (Atheneum, 1963), was solicited...