Peter Straub was an award-winning author of horror novels including “Ghost Story,” who cowrote “The Talisman” and “Black House” with Stephen King.
- Died: September 5, 2022 (Who else died on September 5?)
- Details of death: Died after a long illness at the age of 79.
- We invite you to share condolences for Peter Straub in our Guest Book.
Career beginnings
Straub’s love for writing began as a teen, and he traced some of his interest in horror back to a severe car accident he was in as a child. Seriously injured and hospitalized for months, Straub later said the accident made him contemplate his own mortality from a young age. He published his first novel, “Marriages,” in 1973, though it wasn’t until his third novel, 1975’s “Julia,” that he began exploring the supernatural. Straub broke through to a wide audience with his 1979 fifth book, the bestselling “Ghost Story,” following a group of friends haunted by their past. It was adapted into a 1981 movie. Straub won the August Derleth Award for his 1983 novel “Floating Dragon.”
Collaborating with King
Straub and his longtime friend and fellow horror author, King, began talking about working together several years before they were able to begin that collaboration. The result of their planning and work was “The Talisman,” an epic fantasy novel published in 1984 and focusing on a boy who travels to a parallel universe to save his mother and that universe’s queen. Straub and King revisited that boy as an adult in their 2001 collaboration, “Black House,” and they had talked about writing a third book in the series, though those plans were never realized.
Later career
Straub published more than two dozen other novels, story collections, novellas, and other books in the years after “The Talisman.” Several were award-winning, including the Bram Stoker Award winners “The Throat,” “Mr. X,” “Lost Boy, Lost Girl,” “In the Night Room,” and “A Dark Matter.” Straub was also honored with the World Fantasy Award for “Koko.” Straub also edited anthologies including “H.P. Lovecraft: Stories” and “Poe’s Children: The New Horror.”
Notable quote
“I like the worst characters, I like the villain. You can almost always tell there’s a lot of imaginative sympathy for them on my part. Once I start thinking about how they got that way I feel empathy and compassion. I don’t want to kill them off.” —from a 2016 interview for Salon
Tributes to Peter Straub
Full obituary: Locus
