it in Weird Tales (November 1927). He was of partial Native American ancestry. According to the author note by Gahan Wilson in Gahan Wilson, ed. First World Fantasy Awards (NY: Doubleday, 1977, p. 253), Wellman's "ancestry reaches back through the Confederate South to colonial Virginia, with the potent infusion of Gascon French and American Indian." One of Wellman's brothers, Paul Wellman, was also a well published author, another Frederick Lovejoy Wellman, was a noted plant pathologist. The 1920s and '30s His first story published, "The Lion Roared" (Thrilling Tales, 1927), was based on the stories told to him in his African childhood upbringing. Wellman's first science fiction novel was published in 1929 (The Invading Asteroid) but he would not work at full length again until 1941. Around that time he started a friendship with Vance Randolph, an acclaimed folklorist and expert on Ozark mountain magic and traditions. Randolf took Wellman on trips through the Arkansas Ozarks, learning folk traditions and meeting the secluded people of the American back country. It was through Randolph that Wellman met folk music legend Obray Ramsey, whose music would have a profound effect on Wellman and his writing. In the late 1920s, during the silent film era, Wellman wrote movie reviews for the Wichita Beacon and also worked for The Wichita Eagle as a court and crime reporter. He sold many stories in this period to Ozark Stories and Thrilling Tales. He married Frances Obrist "Garfield" (her pen name), who was a horror writer in her own right; she sold her first story to Weird Tales in 1939. During the Depression, Wellman's newspaper work started to dwindle, so in 1934 he moved from Kansas to New York City where he became Assistant Director of the WPA's New York Folklore Project. Alfred Bester described meeting Wellman in about 1939: "Mort Weisinger introduced me to the informal luncheon gatherings of the working science fiction authors of the late thirties... The vivacious compère of those luncheons was Manley [sic] Wade Wellman, a professional Southerner full of regional anecdotes. It's my recollection that one of his hands was slightly shriveled, which may have been why he came on so strong for the Confederate cause. We were all very patient with that; after all, our side won the war. Wellman was quite the man-of-the-world for the innocent thirties; he always ordered wine with his lunch." Moving from New York to