Neal Shusterman | |
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Born | New York City, U.S. | November 12, 1962
Occupation | Novelist |
Language | English |
Nationality | American |
Alma mater | University of California, Irvine |
Period | 1988–present |
Genre | Young adult fiction, dystopian fiction, science fiction |
Notable works |
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Notable awards | National Book Award for Young People's Literature (2015) Margaret A. Edwards Award (2024) |
Children | 4 |
Website | |
storyman |
Neal Shusterman (born November 12, 1962) is an American writer of young adult fiction. He won the 2015 National Book Award for Young People's Literature for his book Challenger Deep and his novel, Scythe , was a 2017 Michael L. Printz Honor book. [1] [2]
He won the Margaret Edwards Award in 2024 "honoring his significant and lasting contribution to writing for teens." [3]
Shusterman was born on November 12, 1962, and raised in Brooklyn, New York City. His family is Jewish. [4]
From a young age, Shusterman was an avid reader. At the age of 16, Shusterman and his family moved to Mexico City. [5] He finished high school there at the American School Foundation and is quoted as saying that "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." [6] He attended the University of California, Irvine, where he double-majored in psychology and theater, and was also on the varsity swim team. [7] [8] [9]
After college, Shusterman worked as an assistant at the 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 lives in Florida. [10]
Shusterman has received numerous honors for his books, including the 2005 Boston Globe–Horn Book Award and 2008 California Young Reader Medal for The Schwa Was Here, as well as the 2015 National Book Award for Challenger Deep . [11] He served as a judge for the PEN/Phyllis Naylor Working Writer Fellowship in 2012. [12] Unwind has won more than 30 awards and is in development with Constantin Film as a television series. [13]
In 2016, it was announced that his novel Scythe is in development with Universal as a feature film. [14] Challenger Deep was acquired by Disney+ in 2019, and Will McCormack has been selected to write the script. [15]
He has been nominated four times (twice in 2019; 2020; 2023) in different categories of the Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis and won the Youth Jury Prize in 2019. In March 2023, the German translation of the book Roxy, written with his son Jarrod Shusterman, was nominated by the youth jury. [16]
Shusterman has also written for TV, including the Disney Channel Original Movie Pixel Perfect , and episodes of Goosebumps, Animorphs, and R. L. Stine's The Haunting Hour: The Series. [17]
Fellow author Orson Scott Card invited Shusterman to write novels parallel to Ender's Game about other characters from the series, but schedules did not permit it, and Card wrote Ender's Shadow and the subsequent series himself. [18]
The Ender's Game series is a series of science fiction books written by American author Orson Scott Card. The series started with the novelette Ender's Game, which was later expanded into the novel of the same title. It currently consists of sixteen novels, thirteen short stories, 47 comic issues, an audioplay, and a film. The first two novels in the series, Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead, each won both the Hugo and Nebula Awards.
Eric Elfman is an American author with a specializing in science fiction, fantasy, UFOs, and paranormal events. He has written over 14 books for young adults and middle-grade readers, including the Accelerati Trilogy, which was co-written with Neal Shusterman, Almanac of Alien Encounters, Almanac of the Gross, Disgusting, and Totally Repulsive, and Very Scary Almanac.
Robison Wells is an American novelist and blogger.
The Schwa Was Here is a young adult novel by Neal Shusterman, published by Dutton Penguin in 2004. It is about an eighth-grader's friendship with another student named Calvin Schwa, who goes almost completely unnoticed by the people around him.
Unwind is a dystopian novel by Neal Shusterman. It takes place in the United States in the near future. After the Second Civil War was fought over abortion, a compromise was reached, allowing parents to sign an order for their children between the ages of 13 and 18 to be "unwound" — taken to "harvest camps" and dissected into their body parts for later use. The reasoning is that since 99.44% of the body is used, unwinds do not technically die because their individual body parts live on.
Kristin F. Cast is an American author of young adult books and graphic novels, best known for the House of Night series and Sisters of Salem series, written with her mother, P. C. Cast.
Everlost is a fantasy book published in 2006 by the young adult author Neal Shusterman. The story is the first in the Skinjacker trilogy that takes place in Everlost, the place between life and death.
Everwild is a 2009 fantasy novel by American young adult author Neal Shusterman. The book is the second book in the Skinjacker Trilogy, which takes place in Everlost, a limbo-like place between life and death.
Joshua "Josh" Viola is a science fiction/fantasy/horror writer, artist and film producer best known for Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver – The Dead Shall Rise, True Believers, Denver Moon, The Bane of Yoto and his companies Hex Publishers and Bit Bot Media. He is a 2021 Splatterpunk Award nominee and a 2022 Colorado Book Awards winner.
Jennifer Anne Nielsen is an American author known primarily for young adult fiction. Her works include the Ascendance Series, Behind Enemy Lines, The Mark of the Thief, A Night Divided, and the Underworld Chronicles.
Courtney Summers is a Canadian writer of young adult fiction. Her most famous known works are Cracked Up to Be (2008), This Is Not a Test (2012), All the Rage (2015), and Sadie (2018).
Kwame Alexander is an American writer of poetry and children's fiction.
Amie Kaufman is an Australian author. She has authored New York Times bestselling and internationally bestselling science fiction and fantasy for young adults. She is known for the Starbound Trilogy and Unearthed, which she co-authored with Meagan Spooner; for her series The Illuminae Files, co-authored with Jay Kristoff; and for her solo series, Elementals. Her books have been published in over 35 countries.
Jason Reynolds is an American author of novels and poetry for young adult and middle grade audiences. Born in Washington, D.C., and raised in neighboring Oxon Hill, Maryland, Reynolds found inspiration in rap and had an early focus on poetry, publishing several poetry collections before his first novel in 2014, When I Was the Greatest, which won the John Steptoe Award for New Talent.
Scythe is a 2016 young adult novel by Neal Shusterman and is the first in the Arc of a Scythe series. It is set in the far future, where death, disease, and unhappiness have been virtually eliminated thanks to advances in technology, and a benevolent artificial intelligence known as the Thunderhead peacefully governs a united Earth. The notable exception to the Thunderhead's rule is the Scythedom, a group of humans whose sole purpose is to replicate mortal death in order to keep the population growth in check.
Anna-Marie McLemore is a Mexican-American author of young adult fiction magical realism, best known for their Stonewall Honor-winning novel When the Moon Was Ours, Wild Beauty, and The Weight of Feathers.
Thunderhead is a 2018 young-adult novel by Neal Shusterman and is the second in the Arc of a Scythe series, following Scythe.
The Toll is a 2019 young adult novel by Neal Shusterman. It is the final book in the Arc of a Scythe series, following Scythe and Thunderhead. The novel was first published by Simon & Schuster on November 5, 2019. It received generally positive reviews.
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