Artemus Calloway

Abram Artemus Calloway (1883–1948) was born in Pineapple, Alabama, and worked as a journalist, editor and fiction writer in Birmingham. He reported for the Birmingham Ledger and Birmingham News and wrote stories for magazines as well as a newspaper bedtime feature. A specialist profile estimates that he produced hundreds of short stories, novelettes and serials, alongside thousands of short pieces for the newspaper feature. The exact byline varies in some records, but Weird Tales printed his work as Artemus Calloway.

‘Jungle Death’ appeared in the magazine’s April 1923 issue. Calloway also wrote A.B.C.’s of Short Story Writing, published in Birmingham in 1932, and in 1931 began a short-story department for the Birmingham News-Age-Herald, where he encouraged and edited other writers. His working life therefore joined local reporting, popular fiction and practical instruction in writing. He also wrote material for the Neil O’Brien Minstrels and took part in educational projects in Alabama. These details come from specialist and local reference records; the jungle setting and dangers in his Weird Tales story belong to the fiction, not to a claim about the author’s own travels.