Neal Shusterman
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Neal Shusterman (born 1962), is an American author of books for young readers, and a screenwriter. He won the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award for The Schwa Was Here, (2005). He was born and raised in Brooklyn, NY. He lives in Orange County, California with his four children.
His inspiration for writing first came in ninth grade, when his English teacher, seeing a spark of creativity, challenged him to write a story a month. [1] (side note: Shusterman attended Kutsher's Camp Anawana and was a counselor there. Discussing his memories of his time there, he stated "Anawana has played such an important part of my life. My career as an author of young-adult novels began because of the stories I used to tell when I was a counselor." [2] On his own website, he writes "When I was in college, attempting to write my first novels, I went back to that same summer camp I went to as a kid, this time as a counselor. I became known as the camp story teller, and would make up stories to tell the kids at night. Some of those stories became books a few years later -- The Shadow Club, and The Eyes of Kid Midas. It was hearing those kids' reactions to my stories that really made me believe I could be a successful author." [3])
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, an agent (now a producer of shows such as The Dead Zone and Wildfire) took him on as a client. Within a year, Neal had his first book deal, and screenwriting job. Some of his other novels are The Dark Side of Nowhere, Red Rider's Hood, What Daddy Did, The Eyes of Kid Midas, and the Star Shards Chronicles trilogy: Scorpion Shards, Thief of Souls, and Shattered Sky. His novels Downsiders and Full Tilt,' have each won over 20 awards. His most recent novel is Everlost, which he is now adapting for a feature film for Universal Studios.
He has also written for TV, including The Original Disney Channel movie Pixel Perfect, as well as episodes of Goosebumps and Animorphs. [4]
Shusterman was invited by Orson Scott Card to write novels parallel to Ender's Game about other characters from the series, but eventually Card decided to use the idea himself, and wrote Ender's Shadow and the following series.
