Neal Shusterman is one of the most acclaimed and prolific American authors of young adult fiction, born in New York City in 1962.
He grew up in Brooklyn, where he began writing at an early age, spent his final years of high school at the American School of Mexico City, then attended UC Irvine, where he swam for the university team and wrote a successful humour column.
Within a year of graduating he had his first book deal and was hired to write a movie script.
Across a career spanning more than three decades and over thirty books, his best-known works include the Unwind dystology, a chilling meditation on bodily autonomy, and the Arc of a Scythe trilogy, set in a post-mortal world where death is administered by an order of professional reapers. Scythe was a 2017 Michael L. Printz Honor Book, and Challenger Deep, about a teenager's onset of schizophrenia and based on his own son, won the 2015 National Book Award for Young People's Literature. In 2024 he received the Margaret A. Edwards Award for lasting contribution to young adult literature.
He also writes screenplays for film and television, and is the father of four, all talented writers and artists themselves, including his son Jarrod, with whom he co-wrote Dry and Roxy.
