Tappan Wright King

Tappan Wright King (born 1950) is an American editor and author in the field of fantasy fiction, best known for editing The Twilight Zone Magazine and its companion publication Night Cry in the late 1980s. Much of his work has appeared under a shorter form of his name, Tappan King. He is the grandson of legal scholar and utopian novelist Austin Tappan Wright and the husband of author and editor Beth Meacham. He and his wife live near Tucson, Arizona.

Life, education and family King was born in 1950, the son of Lowell and Phyllis (Wright) King. He attended Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, where he met his wife, Beth Meacham. They were married in 1978, and in 1980 bought a house on Staten Island, which they spent eight years rehabilitating. They moved to northeast Tucson, Arizona in 1989, where they resided for 14 years, after which they moved to a ranch south of Tucson close to the village of Corona de Tucson. They keep cats and horses.

Literary career In the late 1970s and early 1980s King and his wife were regular reviewers for Baird Searles' and Martin Last's SF Review Monthly. He was a consulting editor at Bantam Books from 1980 to 1985, helping to found the Bantam Spectra imprint, after which he was editor-in-chief of The Twilight Zone Magazine from March, 1986 until its last issue (February, 1989), and editorial director of its shorter-lived companion title Night Cry to its last issue in Fall 1987. He has since worked as a consultant technical writer and editor.

King has written one novel with Beth Meacham, Nightshade (1976, Pyramid), and one children's novel with Viido Polikarpus, Down Town (1985, Arbor House), in addition to a number of short stories on his own. His work has appeared in the magazines Crimmer's: The Harvard Journal of Pictorial Fiction, Ariel, a fantasy magazine, SF Review Monthly, Galaxy Science Fiction, Locus, Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone Magazine, Night Cry, and Asimov's, and anthologies Devils & Demons (Marvin Kaye, ed., 1987), Alternate Presidents (Mike Resnick, ed., 1992), Alternate Warriors (Mike Resnick, ed., 1993), More Whatdunits (Mike Resnick, ed., 1993), A Wizard's Dozen (Michael Stearns, ed., 1993), Alternate Outlaws (Mike Resnick, ed., 1994), Xanadu 2 (Jane Yolen and Martin H. Greenberg, eds., 1994), and The Armless Maiden and Other Tales for Childhood's Survivors (Terri Windling, ed., 1995).