Bestselling author Veronica Roth was born August 19, 1988 in
New York City. She was primarily raised in Barrington, Illinois and was the
youngest of three children. She graduated from Barrington High School and soon
after, attended Minnesota's Carleton College for one year. Roth then
transferred to Northwestern and graduated from the university's writing
program.
Unlike most authors, Roth had a
fairly quick journey to literary stardom. Writing her first book, Divergent, while on winter break in her
senior year at Northwestern University. She secured a publishing contract with
HarperCollins only four days after sending out the manuscript. At the age of
only 22, she was on the top of the New
York Times bestselling list. Her career took off rapidly with the success
of her first novel, with the movie rights selling before she even graduated
from college.
On a long drive from her home near
Chicago to Minnesota, Roth saw on a billboard an image of a person leaping off
a building. "I wondered why someone would do that," she says.
"At the time, I was also taking Intro to Psych and we were studying the
treatment of phobias by repeated exposure to fears." From this, she
developed the underlying concept of Divergent.
I really like the books she writes, and I think that it's cool to learn a little bit about her. It's really interesting how she same up with the idea for Divergent from a billboard.
ReplyDeleteEven though this was more of a research blog post, your voice in a way shined through. I just started reading one of her books and am really enjoying her style. I loved learning some essential background information on her.
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