Norman L. Rubenstein

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Norman L. Rubenstein Biography

Rubenstein, a former litigation attorney and Administrative Law Judge in Chicago, IL, has spent the past decade becoming an experienced editor, magazine columnist, horror/fantasy/thriller literature and film reviewer, and author/screenwriter. Rubenstein previously organized and presented a number of large science fiction conventions in conjunction with the BBC for their Doctor Who television series and was featured on a nationally televised segment of the Entertainment Tonight TV show back in the 1980′s. He negotiated character merchandising licenses with the BBC for that series and produced multiple lines of toys and merchandise. Rubenstein went on to co-produce ten stage plays including one, Murder By Misadventure, that ran upon London’s famed West End for six months, and a world premiere of an A. R. Gurney play, The Fourth Wall, starring George Segal and Betty Buckley in Chicago.

As an author, Rubenstein has had extensive work, including essays, articles, interviews, and over one hundred book reviews purchased and published in numerous publications, including Cemetery Dance, Dark Scribe, Dark Discoveries, and Shroud Magazines, has written regular columns for Fear Zone and Shroud, is and/or has been a regular reviewer for Horror World and Hellnotes as well as serving a stint as the Reviewer for the Pod Of Horror podcast hosted by author and professional radio host, Mark Justice. Rubenstein is a frequent convention speaker, panelist, and moderator. He is a graduate and alumni of Screenwriting U’s ProSeries professional screenwriting program (PS 45) and is currently working with producers on two of his screenplays.

Rubenstein also has short fiction published in the anthologies Fear Of The Dark, by Horror Bound Magazine Publications (“The Closet” co-authored with Carol Weekes, 2011) and the recent prestigious charity anthology, Horror for Good, Cutting Block Press (“The Widows Laveau” with Steven Booth, 2012), which anthology was a Finalist for the 2012 Bram Stoker Award®. Rubenstein’s work has also appeared in the prominent David Morrell and Hank Wagner edited hardcover Anthology, Thrillers: 100 Must Reads from Oceanview Publishing (2010), and the “Editor’s Foreword” to the Dark Regions Press lettered hardcover edition of Gene O’Neill’s HWA Bram Stoker Award® winning collection Taste Of Tenderloin (2012).

As an editor, Rubenstein has had extensive experience for a number of specialty presses, including Bloodletting Press, Cargo Cult Press, Centipede Press, Dark Regions Press, Thunderstorm Books, Genius Publishing, and most recently as Managing Editor for JournalStone Publishing. Rubenstein has edited over forty books by many prominent authors, including novels, novellas, and collections. A number of these works have been named as Finalists for the Horror Writers Association’s Bram Stoker Awards®, and one work that won the Bram Stoker Award for Best First Novel (2012).

Rubenstein is an active member of both the International Thriller Writers (ITW) and Horror Writers Associations (HWA). He’s been a member of and then served two years as Chair of the HWA’s Bram Stoker Additions Jury, completed a stint as the Chair of the 2011 HWA’s Bram Stoker Anthology Jury, and is in his fourth year as Co-Chair of the HWA’s Bram Stoker Awards® Committee. He was also the editor of the highly praised Souvenir Program Book for The Bram Stoker Awards® Weekend 2013 Incorporating The World Horror Convention, which included original/new fiction by Clive Barker, Dan Simmons, Jonathan Maberry, Amber Benson, Caitlin R. Kiernan, Jeff Strand, and Gene O’Neill, and additional fiction from Robert McCammon and Ramsey Campbell.

Rubenstein was honored to be the recent recipient of the HWA’s prestigious Hammer Award, a periodic award given “to an HWA volunteer who has done a truly massive amount of work for the organization.” It was instituted in 1996, and is decided by a vote of HWA's Board.