Lemony Snicket suffered his own unfortunate event when he turned a personal story about National Book Award-winner Jacqueline Woodson into a racist joke.
Author Daniel Handler, best known for the "Lemony Snicket" children series, congratulated Woodson, who is black, on capturing the 2014 Young People's Literature award for "Brown Girl Dreaming" on stage Wednesday night at the Cipriani in Manhattan.
He then turned to the audience and told them a very personal detail about the 51-year-old Woodson.
"I told you! I told Jacqueline she was going to win," Handler excitedly said.
"And I said that if she won, I'd would tell all of you something I learned about her this summer, which is that Jacqueline Woodson is allergic to watermelon. Just let that sink into your mind."
The crowd fell nearly silent as Handler paused to horrible effect before finishing his racist monologue.
"I said, 'You have to put that into a book.' And she said, 'You put it into a book.' And I said, 'I'm only writing a book about a black girl who is allergic to watermelon if I get a blurb from you, Cornel West, Toni Morrison and Barack Obama saying, 'This guy's OK. This guy is fine.' "
A smattering of laughs added an exclamation point to the poor taste of his comments, which Handler later acknowledged on Twitter.
"My job at last night's National Book Awards #NBAwards was to shine a light on tremendous writers, including Jacqueline Woodson," he tweeted, "and not to overshadow their achievements with my own ill-conceived attempts at humor. I clearly failed, and I'm sorry."
