Fred Davis Chappell (born May 28, 1936 in Canton, North Carolina) is an author and poet. He was an English professor for 40 years (1964–2004) at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He was the Poet Laureate of North Carolina from 1997–2002. He attended Duke University. His 1968 novel Dagon, which was named the Best Foreign Book of the Year by the Académie française, is a recasting of a Cthulhu Mythos horror story as a psychologically realistic Southern Gothic.