R. L. Stine

He married Jane Waldhorn in 1969. She later became an editor and writer and formed the Parachute Press with a partner. The couple has one son, Matthew.

He was born in Ohio to Jewish parents, Lewis Stine and Anne. His father was a shipping clerk while his mother was a homemaker. He has two siblings.

He discovered an old typewriter in the attic when he was nine years old and started typing out stories and jokes. He did not like school much and was an average student.

As a child, he was not interested in playing outside; all he loved to do was to type out jokes and stories on his typewriters which he did for hours at a stretch.

He attended The Ohio State University from where he graduated in 1965 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English. While there he edited the university’s humor magazine, ‘The Sundial’.

After graduation, he moved to New York City to pursue a career in writing. He found a job at Scholastic, Inc. where he worked on children’s magazines. During his leisure time he used to write humor books for kids under the pen name Jovial Bob Stine.

During the mid 1970s, he created a humor magazine for children and teenagers called ‘Bananas’. The magazine was published by Scholastic Press for 72 issues between 1975 and 1984.

He lost his job at Scholastic during a company reorganization which forced him to start writing full-time. It was during this period that he forayed into the horror genre.

He wrote his first horror novel ‘Blind Date’ in 1986. It was well received by the readers and he followed it with ‘Twisted’ (1987) and ‘The Baby-Sitter’ (1989).

In 1989 he started writing books in the ‘Fear Street’ series. It was a horror series for teenagers that revolved around teenagers who faced malignant forces like ghosts, murderers, and other malicious characters. The first book in the series was ‘The New Girl’.

His ‘Goosebumps’ horror fiction series for children earned him the title ‘Stephen King of children’s literature’. The highly successful series has been translated into 32 languages and individual titles have been listed in many bestseller lists, including The New York Times Bestseller list.