Daniel Handler

Daniel Handler is a man of many talents. A screenwriter and an accordionist, he's likely to be best known as a writer under a name that isn't his own. In fact, his pseudonym relegates him to the role of agent, giving him no credit for the series of children's bestsellers that's he's penned.

Daniel Handler, born in February, 1970 in San Francisco, is the creator of Lemony Snicket, the narrator and scribe of A Series of Unfortunate Events. It's a series that catapulted the dolorous narrator to fame as the stories and style delighted readers all around the world.

Daniel Handler was born and raised in San Francisco where he was a member of the San Francisco Boys Chorus. He graduated from Lowell High School and then Weslayan University. At the University, he met Lisa Brown, a graphic artist whom he eventually married.

While The Series of Unfortunate Events is what rocketed Daniel Handler to fame, they weren't his first books. He published two dark novels-one about a teenage girl and the other an incest opera.

Daniel Handler was in two bands after college as an accordion player. He also has provided accordion music for the audiobooks in his book series.

The Lemony Snicket pseudonym came about when he was researching his first novel, The Basic Eight. Daniel Handler, a self-proclaimed and active liberal, didn't want to place his own name on the mailing lists of several right-wing organizations that he needed to learn about for the book. So he came up with the name Lemony Snicket. Sometimes he and his friends would even order pizza under that name. It was an easy name to reach for when he needed a new name for the children's series in which he would just be the "author's" employee.

Bibliography

--B. Redman