Photographed by Mike Huang, http://www.mikehuang.com/blog · CC BY-SA 2.0

Writing as Lemony Snicket, Daniel Handler built A Series of Unfortunate Events into one of the defining children's book series of its era, its arch, doom-laden narration a deliberate departure from the reassurances of standard kids' fiction — it became a 2004 film and a Netflix series. His first novel under his own name, The Basic Eight, was turned down by publisher after publisher for its dark subject matter before finding print. He has also played accordion with the band The Magnetic Fields.