OurBiography

American writer Suzanne Collins is the author of the bestselling The Hunger Games series and The Underland Chronicles.

Synopsis

Born in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1962, Suzanne Collins was the daughter of an Air Force pilot, and her family moved several times when she was young. After proving herself as a talented children's television writer, Collins published her debut book, Gregor the Overlander, the first book of The Underland Chronicles. In 2008, the first book of The Hunger Games series was published. Her trilogy of Hunger Game books went on to become a motion picture series starring Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss Everdeen.

Early Years

The youngest of four children, Suzanne Collins was born on August 10, 1962, in Hartford, Connecticut. The daughter of an Air Force officer, Collins moved a considerable amount during her childhood, living in places like New York City and Brussels.

For the Collins family, history was an immensely important topic. Much of that was driven by Collins' father, who taught history at the college level and was open with his kids about his military experience, including his deployment to Vietnam.

"I believe he felt a great responsibility and urgency about educating his children about war," Collins says. "He would take us frequently to places like battlefields and war monuments. It would start back with whatever had precipitated the war and moved up through the battlefield you were standing in and through that and after that. It was a very comprehensive tour guide experience. So throughout our lives we basically heard about war."

Eventually, the Collins clan ended up in the South, where Suzanne graduated high school from the Alabama School of Fine Arts in 1980. Collins then enrolled at Indiana University, where she graduated in 1985 as a double major in theater and telecommunications. She then went on to earn a master's degree in dramatic writing from New York University.

Following graduate school, Collins moved into television, writing for several children's television programs, including Clarissa Explains It All and Little Bear. Her work for those shows soon caught the notice of James Proimos, creator of the WB children's program Generation O!, who hired Collins as his head writer. A big fan of her writing, it was Proimos who urged Collins to try writing books.

'The Underland Chronicles'

In 2003, Collins published Gregor the Overlander, the first book of The Underland Chronicles. The book tells the tale of a boy and his discovery of a vast new world he discovers when he accidentally falls through the grate of the laundry room in his New York City apartment building.

Gregor received critical success and become a New York Times bestseller. The Underland Chronicles series was composed of this and four additional books: Gregor and the Prophecy Bane, Gregor and the Curse of the Warmbloods, Gregor and the Marks of Secret and Gregor and the Code of Claw.

'The Hunger Games'

While The Underland Chronicles made Collins a well-known author, her next series in ratcheted up her celebrity status. As Collins later recalled, The Hunger Games trilogy was born while she was watching television late one night. Flipping through the channels, Collins was suddenly struck by the lack of distinction between reality TV and coverage of the Iraq war. "We have so much programming coming at us all the time," she says. "Is it too much? Are we becoming desensitized to the entire experience? . . .I can't believe a certain amount of that isn't happening."

The story revolves around the series' rebel heroine, Katniss Everdeen, who lives in the post-apocalyptic nation of Panem, formerly known as North America. In Panem, the Hunger Games are an annual event in which young boys and girls fight to the death in a televised battle.

For Collins, The Hunger Games and her other books touch on the very subjects—necessary and unnecessary wars—that her own father often discussed with her. "If we introduce kids to these ideas earlier, we could get a dialogue about war going earlier and possibly it would lead to more solutions," she says. "I just feel it isn't discussed, not the way it should be. I think that's because it's uncomfortable for people. It's not pleasant to talk about. I know from my experience that we are quite capable of understanding things and processing them at an early age."

The series' first book, The Hunger Games, was released in 2008. Its two sequels, Catching Fire and Mockingjay, were published in 2009 and 2010, respectively. Overall, the series has been a fantastic success, selling more than 50 million print and electronic copies.

A film version of the first book, with a screenplay written by Collins, was released in 2012. The film adaptions of the subsequent books were released in 2013, followed by The Hunger Games: Mockingjay released in two parts, the first in 2014 and second in 2015.

Though she’s primarily known for her YA books, in 2013, Collins penned the autobiographical picture book Year of The Jungle. The book, aimed at children, talks about a parent leaving for war and how a young girl struggles to cope with his absence. Prior to this, she wrote two children books about a computer-game-obsessed boy, When Charlie McButton Lost Power (2007) and When Charlie McButton Gained Power (2009).

Personal Life

Collins, who is extremely private about her life, is married to Cap Pryor, an actor. Together, they have two children and reside in Connecticut.