Novelist and poet Peter Straub passed away last weekend, the author best known for his wide range of work including novels, short stories, poems, and non-fiction.
Born in March of 1946, Straub would grow up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, discovering a love for reading at an early age. An unfortunate victim at the age of seven, Peter Straub was struck by a car and hospitalized for months, Straub saying that the accident made him aware early on of his own mortality; no doubt leading to the author's later venture into the supernatural.
As a young man, Straub would earn an honors BA in English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, graduating in 1965. A year later he would earn an MA at Columbia University and from there, go back to teach at his childhood grade school before moving to Dublin, Ireland.
In Ireland, Straub would begin work on his PhD, and his professional writing career. His first novel, Marriages, was published in 1973 and garnered mixed reviews. In 1975, Straub would publish Julia, his first novel dealing with the supernatural, two years later publishing another novel in the same vein, Ghost Story. Funny enough, before the publication of Ghost Story, Straub and his family would become acquaintances of Stephen King and his family, the two later going on to co-author The Talisman in 1984, and its sequel novel, Black House in 2001.
Winner of the Bram Stoker Award, World Fantasy Award, and the International Horror Guild Award, Peter Straub, husband, father, author and poet, passed away Sunday, September 4, due to complications from a broken hip, at the age of 79.
