VJ Books presents Neil Gaiman!
 Bestselling author Neil Gaiman has long been one of the top writers in
modern comics, as well as writing books for readers of all ages. He is
listed in the Dictionary of Literary Biography as one of the
top ten living post-modern writers, and is a prolific creator of works
of prose, poetry, film, journalism, comics, song lyrics, and drama.
His New York Times bestselling 2001 novel for adults, American Gods,
was awarded the Hugo, Nebula, Bram Stoker, SFX, and Locus awards, was
nominated for many other awards, including the World Fantasy Award and
the Minnesota Book Award, and appeared on many best-of-year lists.
Gaiman's eagerly awaited novel Anansi Boys debuted on the New York Times Bestseller list in September, 2005. About Anansi Boys
Gaiman says: "It's a scary, funny sort of a story, which isn't exactly
a thriller, and isn't really horror, and doesn't quite qualify as a
ghost story (although it has at least one ghost in it), or a romantic
comedy (although there are several romances in there, and it's
certainly a comedy, except for the scary bits).”
Gaiman was the creator/writer of monthly cult DC Comics horror-weird series, Sandman, which won nine Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards, including the award for best writer four times, and three Harvey Awards. Sandman
#19 took the 1991 World Fantasy Award for best short story, making it
the first comic ever to be awarded a literary award. Norman Mailer
said of Sandman: "Along with all else, Sandman is a comic strip for intellectuals, and I say it's about time."
His six-part fantastical TV series for the BBC, Neverwhere, aired in 1996. His novel, also called Neverwhere,
set in the same strange underground world as the television series, was
released in 1997. It appeared on numerous bestseller lists, including
the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, and Locus. Film rights to Neverwhere have been bought by Jim Henson Productions; Gaiman has written a draft of the script for the film.
Gaiman's first book for children, The Day I Swapped My Dad For Two Goldfish, illustrated by Dave McKean, came out in May 1997, was listed by Newsweek as one of the best children's books of the year, and was reissued to acclaim by HarperCollins in 2003.
His children's novel Coraline, published in 2002, was also a New York Times
and international bestseller and an enormous critical success.
Stardust,
a prose novel in four parts, began to appear from DC Comics in October
1997. Illustrated by Charles Vess, it is a fairy story for adults. The
collected DC version appeared in late 1998, and in January 1999
Morrow/Avon released the all-prose unillustrated version of Stardust; it received starred reviews from Booklist, Kirkus and Publishers Weekly, appeared on a number of American bestseller lists, was listed by Publishers Weekly
as one of the best books of the year, and was awarded the prestigious
Mythopoeic Award as best novel for adults in August 1999.
Gaiman's new young adult fantasy novel The Graveyard Book is an homage to The Jungle Book.
In the book, a boy whose parents are killed is adopted by the occupants
of a graveyard (as opposed to the animals in a jungle) and raised by
them. Gaiman first had the idea for the story in 1985, seeing his then
two year-old son Mike "peddling his tricycle around a graveyard".
Gaiman's official website, www.neilgaiman.com,
now has more than one million unique visitors each month, and his
online journal is syndicated to thousands of blog readers every day.
Born and raised in England, Neil Gaiman now lives near Minneapolis,
Minnesota. He has "somehow reached his forties and still tends to need a
haircut."
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