Yerxa, Frances
Entry updated 22 June 2026. Tagged: Author, Editor.
(1917-2019) US author and editor born Frances Ferris; married to Leroy Yerxa from 1935 until his death, and to William L Hamling from 1946 (they divorced in 1967). She began to publish fiction of genre interest with "Negative Problem" in Amazing Stories Quarterly for Winter 1947; the same issue contained her article "Atlantis: Stepping Stone Between Europe and America" (see Atlantis), third in a series of 35 essays on diverse topics contributed to Raymond A Palmer's magazines; the first had appeared in Fantastic (July 1947) and the last was "Consultation with a Ghost" in Mystic Magazine (October 1955). All these magazine pieces were bylined Frances Yerxa, as was "Freddie Funk's Flippant Fairies" (September 1948 Fantastic Adventures), completing the Freddie Funk story sequence begun in 1943 by Leroy Yerxa.
As Frances Hamling she worked as managing editor for William L Hamling's genre magazines Imagination (1950-1958) and Imaginative Tales (1954-1958). She was also executive editor of his Slick men's magazine Rogue (from 1955) and on the board of his Greenleaf Publishing, making her a co-defendant with Hamling when the company was sued for copyright infringement in 1965. [DRL]
Frances Ferris Yerxa Hamling [née Ferris]
born Onondaga, Michigan: 23 September 1917
died Caldwell, Idaho: 3 March 2019
links
previous versions of this entry