Scott Snyder is an American author. He is known for his 2006 short story collection Voodoo Heart, and his work for DC Comics, including series such as American Vampire, Detective Comics, a highly acclaimed run on Batman, Swamp Thing, and Justice League as well as the company-wide crossover storylines "Dark Nights: Metal" and "Dark Nights: Death Metal." He has also written creator-owned comics published through Image Comics, including Wytches, Undiscovered Country, and Nocterra. Snyder has garnered critical acclaim from critics and fans for work, such his run on the New 52 version of Batman that debuted in 2011, and has won numerous industry awards, inclduing two Eisner Awards, a Harvey Award, and a 2012 Eagle Award for Best Writer. Early life At the age of nine, Snyder attended a summer camp where one of the counselors read Stephen King's Eyes of the Dragon to him over the summer, an experience that Snyder says "really jump-started my love of story-telling." He was also influenced by the writing of Denis Johnson, Raymond Carver, Rick Bass, Joy Williams, Elizabeth McKracken, Stephen King, Tobias Wolff, and George Saunders. In comics, he has named Alan Moore and Frank Miller as his favorite writers. Snyder graduated from Brown University in 1998 with a degree in creative writing, and then worked at Walt Disney World for about a year. He initially worked as a custodian, but after he injured his shoulder and started to have some problems with his co-workers, he auditioned and worked as some of the characters. Snyder's Disney World stint strongly influenced his writing; he later recalled, "it did a world of good for my writing ... All the things I ended up writing about, those things that are deeply frightening to me—fear of commitment and growing up, fear of losing loved ones, the wonder and terror of falling in love—all of it was constantly being played out all around me in this weird, cartoonish, magnified way at Disney." Career 2000s Snyder's first collection of stories, Voodoo Heart, was published by the Dial Press in June 2006. The collection received starred reviews from Publishers Weekly and Booklist, and was a Kirkus Reviews "Hot Debut" of the year. The New York Times published a positive review by author Andrew Sean Greer in the Sunday Book Review. Stephen King picked two of the included stories—"Wreck" and "Dumpster Tuesday"—for the 2007 The Best American Short Stories anthology