Clay McLeod Chapman

"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 the short story collections rest area and nothing untoward: tales from the Pumpkin Pie Show, along with the novel miss corpus. He penned The Tribe trilogy, a middlegrade series for Disney—Homeroom Headhunters, Camp Cannibal and Academic Assassins.

Upcoming projects include WENDELL AND WILD, a new middlegrade novel co-authored with Henry Selick (director of Coraline, A Nightmare Before Christmas) and feature film directed by Selick, featuring the voices of Jordan Peele and Keegan-Michael Key, for Netflix.

Chapman’s story late bloomer was adapted into a short film, directed by Craig William 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 second short, Henley, based on the chapter “The Henley Road Motel” from Chapman's 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.

The Boy, a feature-length adaptation of Henley co-written with director Macneill, was produced by SpectreVision (Elijah Wood, Daniel Noah, and Josh C. Waller) in 2015. Other film credits include co-scripting the segment The Trouble With Dad for the horror anthology feature Chilling Visions: 5 States of Fear with director Glenn McQuaid. 

In comics, Chapman has written for Edge of Spider-Verse and Venomverse, The Avengers, Amazing Spider-Man, Ultimate Spider-Man (Marvel), American Vampire, and Vertigo Quarterly: SFX #1 POP! (Vertigo). He is the creator of Self Storage (451 Media) and Lazaretto (BOOM! Studios).

Chapman is the creator of the rigorous storytelling session The Pumpkin Pie Show. In the twenty years of its existence, it has performed internationally at the Romanian Theatre Festival of Sibiu, Edinburgh Fringe Festival, New York International Fringe Festival, Winnipeg Fringe Festival, Edmonton Fringe Festival, Minnesota Fringe Festival, Dublin-based thisisnotashop art space, IGNITE Festival, Women Center Stage Festival and Impact Theatre Festival. 

Chapman has written the book for the musical Hostage Song with music and lyrics by Obie-winner Kyle Jarrow. He is the author of such plays as commencement and volume of smoke. His story-monologues birdfeeder, undertow and the wet echo were selected for The Best American Short Plays: 2007-2008, 2009-2010 and 2013-2014 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.