Talks

Authors Daniel Handler (aka Lemony Snicket) (All The Wrong Questions, A Series of Unfortunate Events) and Neil Gaiman (American Gods, Coraline) come together for a unique, totally unpredictable, and no-holds barred evening of mayhem, in which the longtime friends and occasional collaborators ask each other questions about literature—or swordfight to the death.

Neil Gaiman is a New York Times best-selling author of more than 20 books, including the fantasy novel American Gods and the young adult story Coraline, both of which won the Hugo, Nebula, Bram Stoker, and Locus awards, and the children’s novel The Graveyard Book, which is the only work to win both the Newbery and Carnegie Medals, awarded by librarians for the most prestigious contribution to children’s literature. His groundbreaking Sandman comics, which have garnered nine Eisner Awards, were described by Stephen King as having turned graphic novels into art; its first issue was the first comic book to receive literary recognition, earning the World Fantasy Award for Best Short Story. In February 2015, Gaiman will publish his new book of fiction TRIGGER WARNING: Short Fictions and Disturbances (Morrow). Gaiman lives in the United States and teaches at Bard College.

Daniel Handler (aka Lemony Snicket) is the author of the novels The Basic Eight, Watch Your Mouth, Adverbs, and, with Maira Kalman, Why We Broke Up, which won the Michael J. Printz Honor. As Lemony Snicket, he has written the best-selling series All The Wrong Questions; A Series of Unfortunate Events, which has sold more than 60 million copies; and several picture books including The Dark, illustrated by Jon Klassen, which won the Charlotte Zolotow Award. Handler also works extensively in music; he is the adjunct accordionist for the music group the Magnetic Fields and collaborated with composer Nathaniel Stookey on The Composer Is Dead, a piece commissioned and recorded by the San Francisco Symphony. In February 2015, Handler will publish his new adult novel, We Are Pirates (Bloomsbury). He is a graduate of Wesleyan University and lives in his native San Francisco with his wife, illustrator Lisa Brown, and their son.