Hannes Bok

Wayne Francis Woodard (1914 - 1964), better known as Hannes Bok, was an American speculative fiction artist and author, most well known for the distinctive style of his illustrations. His pen name is derived from the famous composer Johann Sebastian Bach.
==Biography==
Born in Kansas City, Missouri, Bok started contributing art to fanzines in 1932. In the late 1930s, he shared an apartment in Los Angeles with Lovecraft correspondent Emil Petaja. Together, Bok and Petaja struck up friendships with the likes of Ray Bradbury, Henry Kuttner, and Forrest J Ackerman, among others.
In 1939, Bok moved to New York City and started to provide covers and interior art for Weird Tales, continuing to do so until the magazine ended its run in 1954. He also worked for Fantasy Magazine and Stirring Science Stories, and drew the cover art for numerous books, including Arkham House collections of Clark Ashton Smith (Out of Space and Time), Robert E. Howard (Skull-Face and Others), Frank Belknap Long (The Hounds of Tindalos), and William Hope Hodgson (The House on the Borderland and Other Novels).
While in New York, Bok was a member of the science fiction society known as the Futurians, the ranks of which included Donald A. Wollheim, Robert A. W. Lowndes, Frederik Pohl, James Blish, and Damon Knight.
Bok was also a friend and an admirer of Abraham Merritt, and even completed a couple of Merritt's unfinished novels after his death.
In his later years, Bok dedicated himself to the study of astrology and occultism. Tragically, he died in poverty at the age of 49.
==See also==
*Images by Hannes Bok
==Gallery==
TheSandwinCompact.jpg|Illustration of August Derleth's "The Sandwin Compact", by Hannes Bok
Category:Artists
Category:Deceased (Real World)