Born and raised in Portchester, England, Neil Gaiman is a master of many trades; internationally renowned as a comic book writer and novellist he has also written poems, songs and screenplays. His unique work on the classic Sandman for DC comics won nine Eisner awards; Sandman #19 took the 1991 World Fantasy Award for best short story, making it the first and only comic ever to be awarded a WF award (the rules were changed to disallow comics) He won Hugo and Nebula awards in 2002 for his novel American Gods and holds strong friendships with Tori Amos (who mentions him in several of her songs) and J. Michael Straczynski (creator of Babylon 5 and sometime comic book writer himself). The recent follow-up novel to American Gods, Anasi Boys (reviewed here) went straight into the New York Times Bestseller list at No 1.