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R.L. Stine Wins Lifetime Achievement Award

Goosebumps writer to be honored by Horror Writers Association

by
Stephanie Butnick
February 26, 2014
(Flickr)
(Flickr)

R.L. Stine, the children’s horror writer who’s also known as the reason you slept with the light on through at least middle school, is finally getting his due. Stine is being honored with the Horror Writers Association’s lifetime achievement award, Publishers Weekly reports, an award that highlights his astonishing contribution to the genre over the past few decades (he has written literally hundreds of books).

The award is the most prestigious of the HWA’s Bram Stoker Awards, given in acknowledgment of superior achievement not just in a single work but over an entire career. Past winners include Stephen King, Anne Rice, Joyce Carol Oates, and Ray Bradbury. Winners must have exhibited a “profound, positive impact on the fields of horror and dark fantasy,” and be at least 60 years of age or have been published for a minimum of 35 years.

Stine will be honored in May at the association’s annual Bram Stoker Awards (which we are suddenly dying to go to), but the writer won’t be resting on his ghoulish laurels just yet. In October, Stine announced he was bringing back his classic 1990s book series, Fear Street, for a new generation of young readers. Party Games, the first book in the revamped series, will be published this fall.

On the big screen, Israeli actress Odeya Rush will be starring in a film adaptation of the Goosebumps series along with Jack Black. MTV, meanwhile, is in talks to produce a show based on Stine’s 2004 online dating cyber thriller, Eye Candy. All of which makes 2014 the year of the Stine.

Stephanie Butnick is chief strategy officer of Tablet Magazine, co-founder of Tablet Studios, and a host of the Unorthodox podcast.