Neal Shusterman facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Neal Shusterman
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Shusterman at the 2013 Texas Book Festival
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| Born | November 12, 1962 New York City, U.S. |
| 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 |
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.
He won the Margaret Edwards Award in 2024 "honoring his significant and lasting contribution to writing for teens."
Early life
Shusterman was born on November 12, 1962, and raised in Brooklyn, New York City. His family is Jewish.
From a young age, Shusterman was an avid reader. At the age of 16, Shusterman and his family moved to Mexico City. 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." He attended the University of California, Irvine, where he double-majored in psychology and theater, and was also on the varsity swim team.
Career
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.
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. He served as a judge for the PEN/Phyllis Naylor Working Writer Fellowship in 2012. Unwind has won more than 30 awards and is in development with Constantin Film as a television series.
In 2016, it was announced that his novel Scythe is in development with Universal as a feature film. Challenger Deep was acquired by Disney+ in 2019, and Will McCormack has been selected to write the script.
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.
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.
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.
Awards
- 2005 Boston Globe–Horn Book Award for The Schwa Was Here
- 2008 California Young Reader Medal for The Schwa Was Here
- 2015 National Book Award for Young People's Literature, Golden Kite Award for Fiction, and Boston Globe–Horn Book Honor for Challenger Deep
- 2017 Michael L. Printz Award Honor for Scythe
- 2019 Young Hoosier Book Award (Middle Grade) for Scythe
- 2019 Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis for Challenger Deep (German: Kompass ohne Norden), chosen by the youth jury
Screenwriting credits
Television
- Goosebumps (1996–1998)
- Animorphs (1998)
- The Haunting Hour: The Series (2011)
Film
- Double Dragon (1994)
- Pixel Perfect (2004)
