Chet Williamson

Chet Williamson (born 1948) is an American author of books and over a hundred short stories published in The New Yorker, Playboy, Esquire, and many other magazines and anthologies.

Williamson was born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. He attended Indiana University of Pennsylvania, receiving a B.S. in 1970, and went on to be a teacher at public schools in Cleveland, Ohio, then he became a professional actor before becoming a freelance writer in 1986.

Figures in Rain: Weird And Ghostly Tales (2002), a collection of Williamson's short stories, won the International Horror Guild Award. He has been shortlisted twice for the World Fantasy Award, six times for the Horror Writers Association's Bram Stoker Award, and once for the Mystery Writers of America's Edgar Award. His books have been translated and published in many languages and countries, including France, Germany, Russia, Italy and Japan.

From 2001 to 2007, Williamson was the lead singer and guitarist for the Irish duo Fire in the Glen, in which he was partnered with fiddler and bodhranist Tom Knapp. A lifelong member of Actors' Equity Association, he has performed in plays and musicals at Lancaster's Fulton Opera House and Theater of the Seventh Sister.