Editing Michael Chabon (section)

===The Van Zorn persona===
For some of his own genre work, Chabon has forged an unusual horror/fantasy fiction persona under the name of August Van Zorn. More elaborately developed than a pseudonym, August Van Zorn is purported to be a pen name for one Albert Vetch (1899–1963).<ref name="vetch">Chabon (1995). p. 3.</ref> In Chabon's 1995 novel ''Wonder Boys'', narrator Grady Tripp writes that he grew up in the same hotel as Vetch, who worked as an English professor at the (nonexistent) Coxley College and wrote hundreds of [[Pulp magazine|pulp]] stories that were "in the gothic mode, after the manner of [[H. P. Lovecraft|Lovecraft]] ... but written in a dry, ironic, at times almost whimsical idiom."<ref name="vetch"/> A horror-themed short story titled "In the Black Mill" was published in ''[[Playboy]]'' in June 1997 and reprinted in Chabon's 1999 story collection ''Werewolves in Their Youth'', and was attributed to Van Zorn.<ref>{{cite news |last= Gorra|first= Michael |title= Endangered Species|url= https://www.nytimes.com/1999/01/31/books/endangered-species.html|date= January 31, 1999|work= [[The New York Times]] |access-date=July 2, 2009}}</ref>

Chabon has created a comprehensive bibliography<ref name="worksvanzorn">{{cite web|last= Chabon |first= Michael |url=http://www.michaelchabon.com/vanzorn_works.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20020612211200/http://michaelchabon.com/vanzorn_works.html |url-status=dead |archive-date=June 12, 2002 |title=Works of August Van Zorn |publisher=michaelchabon.com at the [[Internet Archive]] |access-date=July 1, 2009}}</ref> for Van Zorn, along with an equally fictional literary scholar devoted to his oeuvre named Leon Chaim Bach.<ref name="sween">{{cite web |title=The August Van Zorn Prize for the Weird Short Story |url=http://www.mcsweeneys.net/links/vanzorn/ |work=McSweeney's Internet Tendency |publisher=[[McSweeney's]] |access-date=July 4, 2009 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20091104054822/http://www.mcsweeneys.net/links/vanzorn/ |archive-date=November 4, 2009 |url-status=dead |df=mdy }}</ref> Bach's now-defunct website<ref name="vanzorn2">{{cite web |last=Chabon |first= Michael |url=http://www.michaelchabon.com/vanzorn.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20020611053300/http://michaelchabon.com/vanzorn.html |url-status=dead |archive-date=June 11, 2002 |title=Van Zorn Website |publisher=michaelchabon.com at the Internet Archive |access-date=July 1, 2009}}</ref> (which existed under the auspices of Chabon's) declared Van Zorn to be, "without question, the greatest unknown horror writer of the twentieth century," and mentioned that Bach had once edited a collection of short stories by Van Zorn titled ''The Abominations of Plunkettsburg''.<ref>{{cite web|last=Chabon |first= Michael |title = About ''Abominations''|url = http://www.michaelchabon.com/vanzorn_about.html|archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20020612211736/http://michaelchabon.com/vanzorn_about.html|url-status = dead|archive-date = June 12, 2002|access-date = July 1, 2009|work = michaelchabon.com}}</ref> (The name "Leon Chaim Bach" is an [[anagram]] of "Michael Chabon", as is "Malachi B. Cohen", the name of a fictional comics expert who wrote occasional essays about the Escapist for the character's Dark Horse Comics series.) In 2004, Chabon established the August Van Zorn Prize, "awarded to the short story that most faithfully and disturbingly embodies the tradition of the weird short story as practiced by [[Edgar Allan Poe]] and his literary descendants, among them August Van Zorn."<ref name="eleanor"/> The first recipient of the prize was [[Jason Roberts (author)|Jason Roberts]], whose winning story, "7C", was then included in ''McSweeney's Enchanted Chamber of Astonishing Stories'', edited by Chabon.<ref name="sween"/>

A scene in the film adaptation of Chabon's novel ''The Mysteries of Pittsburgh'' shows two characters in a bookstore stocking August Van Zorn books.