William L. Chester

William L. Chester (1907–1971) was an American pulp magazine writer best remembered for the Kioga adventure series, published across four novels: Hawk of the Wilderness, Kioga of the Wilderness, One Against a Wilderness, and Kioga of the Unknown Land. In the Tarzan-style lost-world tradition, the books follow Kioga, a white child raised by a hidden people on an island near the Arctic Circle, somewhere in northern Siberia, kept temperate by thermal springs. Hawk of the Wilderness became Chester's best-known work beyond the pulps when Republic Pictures adapted it into a twelve-chapter film serial in 1938, later re-edited for television as The Lost Island of Kioga. Chester wrote during the golden age of adventure pulps, when serialized wilderness and lost-race stories were a magazine staple, and the Kioga tales remain his most lasting contribution to that genre.