Suzanne Collins

Suzanne Collins is the youngest of four children. Her father was an Air Force officer, so the family moved often but generally stayed in the eastern United States. (In Ballad’s acknowledgments, Collins credits her father with both introducing her to military strategy and to Enlightenment-era political theory.) She received a bachelor’s degree from Indiana University Bloomington; she double majored in theater and telecommunications. Several years later, she completed a Master of Fine Arts in dramatic writing from New York University. In 1991, she began to write for children’s television shows on Nickelodeon and for Scholastic Entertainment. In 2003, she published her first novel, Gregor the Overlander, and went on to publish four more novels in what’s now known as the Underland Chronicles. While the Underland Chronicles were popular, Collins rose to fame after publishing The Hunger Games in 2008. The Hunger Games spent more than 60 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, and Collins followed the novel with two more over the next two years, Catching Fire and Mockingjay. She adapted The Hunger Games for film herself. The Hunger Games helped make Collins a household name. She was named one of Time magazine’s most influential people of 2010 and two years later, she became the bestselling Kindle author of all time. Between Mockingjay in 2010 and The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes in 2020, Collins published one other book, Year of the Jungle. She’s married and has two children.