Peter Straub at the 2010 National Book Festival. Speaker Biography: Peter Straub was born in Milwaukee, the first of three sons of a salesman and a nurse. The salesman wanted him to become an athlete, the nurse thought he would do well as either a doctor or a Lutheran minister, but all he wanted to do was to learn to read. He is a novelist as well as a poet and is most famous for his works in the horror genre. His horror fiction has received the Bram Stoker, World Fantasy and International Horror Guild awards, among many others. His 1979 novel, "Ghost Story," was his first smash best-seller and was made into a film in 1981. His current novel is "A Dark Matter" (Doubleday). Straub lives in New York.
