Will Hart · CC BY 2.0

Began his career at seventeen writing for pulp magazines like Weird Tales under the mentorship of H. P. Lovecraft, then built a sixty-year body of work — hundreds of short stories and more than thirty novels — spanning crime, horror, and a smaller strain of science fiction. His 1959 novel Psycho, drawn from the case of Wisconsin murderer Ed Gein, became the basis for Alfred Hitchcock's landmark film the following year. He won the Hugo, Bram Stoker, and World Fantasy awards, and served as president of the Mystery Writers of America.