Max Brooks’ first experience with zombies was when he was thirteen years old, and it left him utterly traumatized.

“It was an Italian cannibal zombie film,” Brooks said, “and I’m 99 percent sure they edited in real cannibal footage from indigenous cultures from New Guinea … That tends to stick with you when you’re thirteen.”

This experience led to a life-long fascination with zombies and zombie culture that ultimately led Brooks to write works such as “The Zombie Survival Guide” and “World War Z,” this year’s common text. 

Brooks spoke at St. Edward’s University on Oct. 10 to share tips for surviving a zombie apocalypse.

Prior to becoming a New York Times best selling author, Brooks was a self-proclaimed super-nerd who was bitten by the writing bug early in life. He wrote his first short story as child on vacation with his parents and kept moving forward from there.

Brooks wrote for “Saturday Night Live,” and although he described his experience there as having “crushed his soul,” he did win an Emmy for his work.

Upon leaving the world of screenwriting, Brooks took to writing books, a change he describes as “awesome and fulfilling.”

Brooks’ first literary venture was “The Zombie Survival Guide,” and while it was written as a sci-fi/horror book, the only horror involved was Brooks’ horror upon learning it was being marketed as a comedy.

Nevertheless, Brooks persevered and began giving zombie survival lectures in order to publicize his book and reach out to fans.

“People seemed to like [the lectures],” Brooks said, “and it just sort of snowballed.”

After the success of his first book, Brooks kept at it, and so came “World War Z,” an oral history of a fictional war between mankind and zombies.

Brooks chose to write his novel in an interview style because he was so profoundly influenced by another novel, “The Good War” by Studs Terkel.

“Oral histories are very important to me. I am very dyslexic, so I learned a lot about history from oral histories, because I could literally listen to them on audiobooks,” Brooks said.

Also, Brooks wanted to “tell a big story,” and the best way to do that, he thought, was from the perspective of many different zombie apocalypse survivors, from all over the world, with very different stories to tell.

“As many fake interviews as I did, I did real interviews, and talked to real people. For the chapter about organ transplants, I talked to real doctors, and for the military stuff I talked to people in the military. The laser weaponry that I talk about, I researched it directly from the companies that designed them, and that actually determined how I wrote,” Brooks said.

After years of research, personal struggles, and some tough cuts, “World War Z” was finally published.

The book spent four weeks atop the New York Times Best Seller list, peaking at number nine, and is now set to become a major motion picture produced by Brad Pitt. Brooks is not involved in the making of the film and prefers it that way.

Following the success of “World War Z,” Brooks wrote a graphic novel entitled “Zombie Survival Guide: Recorded Attacks.” Brooks has also done some work for the “G.I. Joe” series and has a World War I graphic novel in the works, which will hopefully be released next year.

In addition to being a renowned writer, Brooks describes himself as a history nerd who enjoys gardening, with an uncontrollable passion for what he does.