2026 Marian McFadden Memorial Lecture with R.L. Stine

R.L. Stine, acclaimed children’s horror author and the mind behind Goosebumps and Fear Street, will be the featured author at the 47th Annual Marian McFadden Memorial Lecture. Stine will appear in a curated conversation with librarian and new host of Reading Rainbow, Mychal Threets. The event will take place at the Madam Walker Legacy Center, 617 Indiana Ave, Indianapolis.

• Tickets are free but extremely limited and will be available to the public beginning Friday, March 6 at 5 p.m., while supplies last. Sign up for a reminder to secure your free ticket.

• This event will be recorded! If you are unable to secure a ticket, please visit The Indianapolis Public Library on YouTube to watch the lecture until April 18, 2026.
• A book signing will follow the lecture. Book signing capacity is limited to 150 guests. You will have the chance to be randomly selected for the book signing. More details are disclosed in the ticket order form.

About R.L. Stine

R.L. Stine has been writing horror stories and scaring young readers for over thirty years. His bestselling Goosebumps series quickly became a publishing phenomenon, and his books came to define horror for a generation of avid young readers. The Goosebumps series has sold more than 400 million copies in the United States and The Guinness Book of World Records cited Stine as the bestselling series author in history.

Stine began his career at Scholastic and started writing joke books and humor books under the name Jovial Bob Stine. He published his first teen horror novel, Blind Date, in 1986, followed by the Fear Street series in 1989, which quickly became the best-selling YA series in history. When the Goosebumps series began in 1992, Stine became a worldwide publishing celebrity, and the series was soon adapted for television, becoming the number one kid’s show in America for three years in a row.

In 2015, The Goosebumps Movie, starring Jack Black as Stine, was released by Sony and Columbia Pictures. Featuring forty monsters from the Goosebumps books as well as the infamous Slappy, the evil dummy, it quickly became the #1 film in the United States. Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween was released in 2018 and the first of three films based on Stine’s Fear Street series was released on Netflix in 2021.

With many of Goosebumps’ original fans now well into adulthood, Stine has published numerous novels for adults, including Superstitious, The Sitter, Eye Candy, and Red Rain. Stine is a three-time recipient of both the Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Award and the Disney Adventures Kids’ Choice Award. He also won the Thriller Writers of America Silver Bullet Award in 2007 and the Horror Writers Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2014. Stine lives in New York City with his wife.

For more information on R.L. Stine, please visit www.simonspeakers.com.

About Mychal Threets

Growing up in Fairfield, CA—right between Sacramento and San Francisco—Mychal's love for libraries began as a homeschooled kid who practically grew up in their aisles. He got his first library card at the age of 5 and never looked back, eventually landing his first job as a library shelver for the very library he grew up in. Today, he is the Supervising Librarian of that same beloved library—a true full circle moment!

Mychal's passion for storytelling shines through everything he does. Whether sharing stories of library kids and library grown-ups he encounters on social media or encouraging others to find their own love for libraries, Mychal makes it his mission to connect people with the magic of libraries. In his words, "Library joy and book joy are what I'm all about. We all belong in our libraries!"

A proud recipient of the 2023 American Library Association's "I Love My Librarian" Award, Mychal holds a Bachelor's degree in Communications from the University of Phoenix and a Master's in Library and Information Science from San Jose State University. He is also a mental health advocate. Mychal is the new host of Reading Rainbow.

About the McFadden Lecture

The Marian McFadden Memorial Lecture Series was established after The Indianapolis Public Library Foundation received a gift from the estate of Marian McFadden, Director of Public Libraries in Indianapolis from 1945-1956. This annual author lecture series, which typically takes place in the spring, was named in her honor.

Learn more about the Marian McFadden Memorial Lecture.

Made possible by Friends of the Library through gifts to The Indianapolis Public Library Foundation.

Didn't nab a ticket, but still interested in attending? We encourage you to join us for the event regardless. We will have a waiting area for un-ticketed guests. Any available seats will be released to the public ten minutes prior to the event.