As you look into the lives of the men and women who contributed to Weird Tales, you start to see connections and patterns. I'm almost certain there was a connection between Weird Tales and writers in California, but then Farnsworth Wright was a native Californian who had worked as a critic and journalist there and in Chicago before becoming editor of "The Unique Magazine" in 1924.
I also sense a connection to writers in Alabama, but I can't say what that connection might have been, who created it, or who maintained it. In any case, I have listed below all of the tellers of weird tales that I have covered so far who were born in or worked in the Yellowhammer State. More than a couple of them were newspapermen. That seems like the connection. Still, it's not clear. And now that the Weird Tales files and correspondence are gone--their destruction happened about half a century ago--we may never know.
Ethel Morgan-Dunham (1880-1960)--Born in Ohio and a teacher in Iowa, Ethel Morgan-Dunham moved to Alabama in the early 1930s with her husband. They lived in Loxley. She was buried at Fairhope.
Marion Heidt Mimms (1882-1972)--Marion Heidt Mimms was born in Selma, Alabama, and attended the University of Alabama, where her uncle was a professor. Later she lived in Nashville, Tennessee, with her husband.
Artemus Calloway (1883-1948)--Artemus Calloway was born in Pineapple, Alabama, and worked for the Birmingham Ledger and the Birmingham News as a reporter, feature writer, columnist, and editor. He was well connected and possibly a conduit for communications to and from the editorial offices of Weird Tales.
Howard Ellis Davis (1883-1951)--Howard Ellis Davis was born in Florida but lived and worked in Oak Grove, Alabama, as a writer. His main job was as an engineer, although he sold plenty of stories to fiction magazines and pulp magazines. He died and was buried in Alabama.
Pettersen Marzoni (1886-1939)--Born in Florida, Pettersen Marzoni lived and worked in Alabama for most of his life. He was with the Birmingham News and Birmingham Age-Herald for several years and presumably knew and worked with Artemus Calloway.
Tarleton Collier (1888 or 1889-1970)--Edward Tarleton Collier was born in Mobile, Alabama, and though he was editor of the Selma Journal, he spent most of his life and career on newspapers in Georgia and Kentucky.
Stewart Van der Veer (1893-1966)--John Stewart Van der Veer worked for the Birmingham Post for many years, but he knew Artemus Calloway of the Birmingham News as early as 1926. I suspect the journalistic fraternity in Birmingham was a fairly small one. But here Calloway's name has come up again, with the implication that he was, again, a conduit, perhaps almost like an agent, for writers seeking to get their work into the pages of Weird Tales.
Jack Kytle (1906-1971)--Elvyn Jackson "Jack" Kytle was a native Alabaman and worked for the Birmingham Age-Herald, the Birmingham Post, and the Birmingham Post-Herald. Maybe he knew and worked with all of the other newspapermen listed above.
Suzanne Pickett (1908-1999)--Suzanne Pickett was a writer and reporter for a small-town newspaper in Alabama, but she also had her first story, at age ten, in the Birmingham News. So we keep coming back to Birmingham newspapers. I can only assume that it was through one or more of those papers and one or more writers or editors for those papers that Weird Tales was in touch with tellers of weird tales in Alabama.
I haven't written yet about Mary Elizabeth Counselman (1911-1995), but she was an Alabaman, too, a native of Birmingham and a reporter with the Birmingham News.
There were almost certainly more tellers of weird tales from Alabama. I'll add to this list as I discover them.
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