R.L. Stine

Robert Lawrence Stine is the author of hundreds of horror fiction novels, including the books in the Goosebumps, Rotten School, Mostly Ghostly, The Nightmare Room, and Fear Street series. Some of his lesser-known works include a Space Cadets trilogy, two Hark gamebooks, a two-part novel The Beast and dozens of joke books.

Stine was born in Columbus, Ohio, the oldest of three children, to a homemaker mother and a shipping clerk father. He began writing at age 9 when he found a typewriter in his attic, subsequently beginning to type stories and joke books and has been writing ever since. He graduated from Ohio State University in 1965 and moved to New York City to become a writer. He wrote dozens of joke books for kids under the pen name Jovial Bob Stine and created the humor magazine Bananas, where he worked for many years with Nickelodeon. He wrote some movie novelizations and many gamebooks at this time, too. In 1990, Stine teamed up with Parachute Press to create Fear Street. In 1992, Stine attempted at writing comedy by creating a series called Space Cadets which lasted only three books. Later in the year, Stine and Parachute went on to launch Goosebumps.