Author Bios

Veronica Roth was born on August 19, 1988, in New York City and grew up in the suburbs of Chicago, Illinois. She attended Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, where she studied creative writing. It was during her senior year at Northwestern that she drafted the novel that would become Divergent. Roth has spoken about how…

John Michael Green was born on August 24, 1977, in Indianapolis, Indiana. He grew up in Orlando, Florida, and attended the Indian Springs School in Alabama, a formative experience that provided the basis for his debut novel. He studied English and Religious Studies at Kenyon College in Ohio, graduating in 2000, and subsequently worked as…

Joanne Rowling was born on July 31, 1965, in Yate, Gloucestershire, England. She grew up in Chepstow, Wales, and later in Tutshill, near the Forest of Dean. A passionate reader from earliest childhood, she cites C.S. Lewis, E. Nesbit, and Paul Gallico among early influences. She studied French and Classics at the University of Exeter…

Suzanne Collins was born on August 10, 1962, in Hartford, Connecticut, into a military family. Her father, Michael Collins, was a career officer in the United States Air Force and a Vietnam veteran, and his commitment to educating his children about war, history, and the realities of armed conflict profoundly shaped his daughter’s worldview. The…

Richard Osman was born on November 3, 1970, in Haywards Heath, West Sussex, England. He was educated at Charterhouse School before reading Social and Political Sciences at Pembroke College, Cambridge University. His career was spent almost entirely in television: he became Creative Director of Endemol UK, responsible for major game shows, and became a household…

Liane Moriarty was born in 1966 in Sydney, Australia, the third of six siblings in a large storytelling family. Her sisters Jaclyn and Nicola are also published authors. Moriarty studied at Macquarie University, graduating with a degree in English literature, and worked for many years in advertising as a copywriter before turning seriously to fiction…

Alex Michaelides was born in 1977 in Cyprus and grew up in a bicultural household, with a Greek Cypriot father and an English mother. He attended Bryanston School before reading English Literature at Cambridge University and then studying screenwriting at the American Film Institute in Los Angeles. This transatlantic education gave him an unusually precise…

Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller was born on September 15, 1890, in Torquay, Devon, England, into a comfortable upper-middle-class family. Educated largely at home by her mother, she was a voracious reader from childhood. Challenged by her sister to write a detective story that would keep readers guessing to the end, she produced her first novel,…

Truman Capote was born Truman Streckfus Persons on September 30, 1924, in New Orleans, Louisiana. His parents divorced when he was four and he spent years with relatives in Monroeville, Alabama, where he formed a pivotal friendship with neighbour Nelle Harper Lee, the future author of To Kill a Mockingbird. A precocious child who taught…

Stieg Larsson was born Karl Stig-Erland Larsson on August 4, 1954, in Skalleftehamn, a small town in northern Sweden. Raised largely by his maternal grandparents in a remote village, he was profoundly shaped by his grandfather, a politically engaged anti-fascist whose convictions became Larsson’s own. After his grandfather’s death Larsson returned to his parents in…