Suzanne Collins biography

Synopsis

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 went to receive 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, it paled in comparison to her next series in terms of ratcheting up her celebrity status. As Collins later recalled, The Hunger Games trilogy was born while she was watching television late one night.