Leroy Yerxa

Born in Old Town, Maine, on August 11, 1915, Leroy Arnold Yerxa became one of the busy young writers in the Chicago-centered pulp science fiction scene of the 1940s. He wrote for Amazing Stories and Fantastic Adventures, two of the best-known Ziff-Davis magazines of the era.

Yerxa published under his own name and under several pseudonyms, including Elroy Arno, and bibliographic sources credit him with a substantial number of stories despite his short life. Accounts of his career describe him as one of the more prolific contributors to those magazines during the years when editors needed writers who could produce lively, fast-moving fiction to order.

He died on February 28, 1946, at just 30 years old. Because his career was cut so short, his work is often remembered as a glimpse of a promising pulp author whose imagination burned brightly and briefly.