Darrell Schweitzer

Darrell Schweitzer
Schweitzer in 2006
Born	(1952-08-27) August 27, 1952 (age 64) Woodbury, New Jersey, USA
Occupation	Writer, editor, and essayist
Nationality	American
Period	1968–present
Genre	Speculative fiction
Subject	same

Darrell Charles Schweitzer (born August 27, 1952) is an American writer, editor, and critic in the field of speculative fiction. Much of his focus has been on dark fantasy and horror, although he does also work in science fiction and fantasy. Schweitzer is also a prolific writer of literary criticism and editor of collections of essays on various writers within his preferred genres.

Schweitzer was born in Woodbury, New Jersey, son of Francis Edward and Mary Alice Schweitzer. He attended Villanova University from 1970–1976, from which he received a B.S. in geography (1974) and an M.A. in English (1976). He started his literary career as a reviewer and columnist. He worked as an editorial assistant for Isaac Asimov's SF Magazine from 1977–1982 and Amazing Stories from 1982–1986, was co-editor with George H. Scithers and John Gregory Betancourt of Weird Tales from 1987–1990 and sole editor of the same magazine from 1991–1994 and its successor, Worlds of Fantasy & Horror, from 1994–1996. From 1998–2007 he was again co-editor of the revived Weird Tales, first with Scithers and then with Scithers and Betancourt. He has also been a part-time literary agent for the Owlswick Agency in Philadelphia. and a World Fantasy Award judge. He is a member of Science Fiction Writers of America and Horror Writers of America. He lives and works in the Philadelphia area.

Schweitzer wrote a sequence of epic fantasies set in a far future Earth that culminates in his novel The Shattered Goddess (1982). The first work in his tales of the world of the Great River focusing on child-sorcerer Sekenre, "To Become a Sorcerer" (1991), was nominated for the World Fantasy Award and later expanded into the novel The Mask of the Sorcerer (1995). Other works include his first novel, The White Isle, written in 1976 but unpublished until 1989, his stories of the lapsed knight Julian, most of them collected in We Are All Legends (1981), and his stories of Tom O'Bedlam.