Books

Six of Handler's major works have been published under his name.^[26] His first, The Basic Eight, was rejected by many publishers for its subject matter and tone (a dark view of a teenage girl's life). Handler has said the novel was rejected 37 times before being published in 1999.^[27][28]

Watch Your Mouth, his second novel, was completed before publication of The Basic Eight. It follows a more operatic theme, complete with stage directions and various acts. Watch Your Mouth's second half replaces the opera troupe with the form of a 12-step recovery program, linguistically undergone by the protagonist. In April 2005, Handler published Adverbs, a collection of short stories that he says are "about love." It was followed in 2011 by Why We Broke Up, which received a 2012 Michael L. Printz honor award.^[29] Handler's 2015 novel We Are Pirates^[30] is about a modern-age pirate who "wants to be an old-fashioned kind of pirate."^[31][32] His most recent novel, All the Dirty Parts, was published in 2017^[33] and "takes the blunt and constant presence of a male teen's sexuality and considers it with utmost seriousness".^[26]

Handler served as a judge for the PEN/Phyllis Naylor Working Writer Fellowship in 2012.^[34] In 2016, he founded Per Diem Press, a poetry competition for young writers.^[35] He awarded $1,000 to three winners and published a chapbook of their work.^[36]

Lemony Snicket

Main article: Lemony Snicket

Handler at a book signing in 2006

Handler wrote the bestselling series of 13 novels A Series of Unfortunate Events under the Snicket pseudonym from 1999 to 2006.^[37] The series is about three orphaned children who experience increasingly terrible events after their parents die and their home burns (at the hands of a man named Count Olaf and his troupe of associates). Snicket acts as the orphans' narrator and biographer.^[38] Handler narrated the audiobooks for three books in the series before handing back the narrating job to the original narrator, Tim Curry.

From 2012 to 2015, Handler published the four-part series All the Wrong Questions under the name Lemony Snicket; the books explore Snicket's childhood and V.F.D. apprenticeship in the failing town Stain'd-by-the-Sea.^[39][40][41] He has also written other children's novels under the Snicket name, including companion books to his two Snicket series,^[42] and children's books such as The Composer is Dead^[43] and The Latke Who Couldn't Stop Screaming.^[44]

Music

Handler playing and singing at a reading of The End in 2006

Handler was in two bands after college, the Edith Head Trio and Tzamboni, but his music received little attention until 69 Love Songs, a three-album set by The Magnetic Fields on which he played accordion.^[45][46][47] In the box set of the project, Handler interviews band leader Stephin Merritt about the project. He also appears in Kerthy Fix's and Gail O'Hara's 2009 documentary Strange Powers, about Merritt and the Magnetic Fields.

Handler has played accordion in several other Merritt projects, including The 6ths and The Gothic Archies, the last of which provided songs for the A Series of Unfortunate Events audiobooks. In 2006, a Gothic Archies album was released with all 13 songs from the 13 A Series of Unfortunate Events audiobooks, along with two bonus songs.

In the audio commentary on the film adaptation Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events, Handler plays a song about how depressing it is to have leeches in a film.

Handler wrote the lyrics to the song "Radio", performed by One Ring Zero,^[48] and "The Gibbons Girl", by Chris Ewen's The Hidden Variable.

Theater

In 2017, Handler wrote the play Imaginary Comforts, and The Story of The Ghost of The Dead Rabbit, which was performed at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre.^[49] The satirical play follows the intertwining lives of three characters and is inspired by the grief Handler felt after his father's death.^[50]

Film and television

Handler has also had some success in film. He produced the screenplay for Rick, based on the Verdi opera Rigoletto,^[51] as well as Kill the Poor, based on the novel by Joel Rose.^[52]

Handler was involved in the screenwriting process for the film Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events but was ultimately removed from the project. After writing eight drafts of the script for Sonnenfeld,^[53] he was replaced by Robert Gordon in May 2003.^[54] Handler approved of the changes that were made to his original screenplay.^[55] "I was offered credit on the film for screenwriting by the Writers Guild of America," Handler said, "but I didn't take it because I didn't write it. I felt like it would be an insult to the guy who did."^[53]

Handler submitted a commentary track for the DVD version alongside director Brad Silberling. In character as Lemony Snicket, he derides the Lemony Snicket in the film as an impostor and plays the accordion and sings about leeches rather than pay attention to the film. Many times during the track, he shows great sympathy towards the Baudelaire children and implies that he is being held captive by the director to do the commentary.

Handler was a writer on the Netflix series A Series of Unfortunate Events, also contributing lyrics to the show's theme song, which varies each episode.^[56][57] The show has won several accolades, including a Peabody Award in 2017 for excellence in children's and youth programming.^[58]

Remark about race

At the November 2014 National Book Awards ceremony, Handler made a controversial remark after author Jacqueline Woodson was presented with an award for Brown Girl Dreaming. During the ceremony, he said that Woodson was allergic to watermelon, a reference to the racist watermelon stereotype. His comments were immediately criticized;^[59][60] Handler apologized and donated $10,000 to We Need Diverse Books, and promised to match donations up to $100,000.^[61] In a New York Times op-ed published shortly thereafter, "The Pain of the Watermelon Joke", Woodson wrote that "in making light of that deep and troubled history" with his joke, Handler had come from a place of ignorance, but underscored the need for her mission to "give people a sense of this country's brilliant and brutal history, so no one ever thinks they can walk onto a stage one evening and laugh at another's too often painful past".^[62][63][64]

Allegations of inappropriate sexual comments

In February 2018, Handler signed an online pledge to boycott conferences that do not have and enforce harassment policies. Underneath his comment, author Kate Messner recounted an incident in which Handler had made inappropriate jokes directed at her, such as "Are you a virgin, too?!" and "These children's book events always turn into orgies!"^[65] This led to many other women accusing Handler of verbal sexual harassment at book conferences; among the public accusations are stories of Handler telling a woman he had just met to kiss a random stranger, making crass comments to a teenage girl and walking off without apology when confronted, referring to a stranger as a "hot blonde" and making a "uni-ball" double entendre in front of young children. The incident occurred during the larger Me Too movement.^[65][66]

Handler apologized for his behavior, saying, "It has never been my wish to insult any of my professional colleagues",^[65] "my sense of humor has not been for everyone",^[66] "as a survivor of sexual violence, I also know very well how words or behaviors that are harmless or even liberating to some people can be upsetting to others",^[67] and "I am listening and willing to listen; I am learning and willing to learn."^[65] After this, Wesleyan University students began to protest Handler's upcoming planned commencement speech at the university.^[67] In March 2018, Wesleyan president Michael S. Roth announced that Handler had withdrawn from the appearance,^[68] to be replaced by Anita Hill.^[67]