Neal Shusterman

Neal Shusterman

Shusterman at the 2013 Texas Book Festival
Born Neal Shusterman
November 12, 1962
Brooklyn, New York, USA
Occupation Novelist
Nationality American
Website
storyman.com

Neal Shusterman (born November 12, 1962) is a popular and successful American writer of young-adult fiction.

Life

Shusterman was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. Even from a young age, Shusterman was an avid reader. At age 8, Shusterman sent a letter to E. B. White, informing him that he believed Charlotte's Web needed a sequel. White replied, stating that he thought the book was fine as it was, requiring no sequel, but encouraged Shusterman to continue writing. At age 16, Shusterman and his family moved to Mexico City.[1] He finished high school there at the American School Foundation and quotes, "Having an international experience changed my life, giving me a fresh perspective on the world, and a sense of confidence I might not have otherwise." He attended the University of California, Irvine, where he double-majored in psychology and theater, and was also on the varsity swim team. During his years there, he wrote a popular humor column for the school paper. After college, he got a job as an assistant at Irvin Arthur Associates, a talent agency in Los Angeles, where Lloyd Segan became his agent. Within a year, Shusterman had his first book deal, and a screenwriting job. He currently lives in Southern California with his four children.[2]

Shusterman won the Boston Globe–Horn Book Award, and the 2008 California Young Reader Medal for The Schwa Was Here. He served as a judge for the PEN/Phyllis Naylor Working Writer Fellowship in 2012.[3] Some of his other novels include The Dark Side of Nowhere, Everlost, What Daddy Did, The Shadow Club, The Shadow Club Rising, The Eyes of Kid Midas, and the Star Shards Chronicles: Scorpion Shards, Thief of Souls, and Shattered Sky. His novels Downsiders and Full Tilt have each won over 20 awards. Unwind has won more than 30 awards, and is now in development with Constantin Films as a feature film series. Shusterman's latest novels are Ship Out of Luck (2013), which is a sequel to his book The Schwa was Here[4] and "UnSouled (2013)", the third novel in the "Unwind" series. He can be found on Facebook and Twitter as simply "nealshusterman."

Shusterman has also written for TV, including the Original Disney Channel movie Pixel Perfect, as well as episodes of Goosebumps and Animorphs.[2]

Shusterman was invited by Orson Scott Card to write novels parallel to Ender's Game about other characters from the series, but schedules didn't permit, and Card wrote Ender's Shadow and the subsequent series himself.[5]

Bibliography

Fictional Series

Dark Fusion Series

Darkness Creeping

Skinjacker Trilogy

Star Shards

(reissued by Simon and Schuster in 2013)

The X-Files Universe

  • 3 Bad Sign (1997) [writing as Easton Royce ]
  • 10 Dark Matter (1999) [writing as Easton Royce ]
  • 8 Voltage (1996) [writing as Easton Royce ]

The Unwind Dystology

As of May 14, 2013, Neal announced the release of a 4th book (UnDivided) in this series because UnSouled was 630 pages long. He and his publishers thought it would be better to take out the last 200 or so pages and stretch them into a 4th novel, with a release date in the Fall of 2014.

Novels

Picture Books

Collections

Games

Nonfiction

Poems

Essays

References

  1. ↑ Gale, Thomas. "Neal Shusterman Biography". BookRags. Retrieved 2009-05-08.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Shusterman, Neal. "Neal Shusterman: Bio". storyman.com. Self published. Retrieved 2008-05-23.
  3. ↑ "Announcing the 2012 PEN Literary Award Recipients". PEN American Center. October 15, 2012. Retrieved February 6, 2013.
  4. ↑ Shusterman, Neal. "Neal Shusterman: News". storyman.com. Self published. Retrieved 2008-05-23.
  5. ↑ Card himself describes the origins of the idea for Ender's Shadow and Shusterman's early involvement in the Foreword of some editions of Ender's Shadow, including ISBN 978-0-7653-4240-9)

External links