Suzanne Collins

Early life and training

Suzanne Collins, born August 10, 1962, in Hartford, Connecticut, is an American author and television writer best known for the young adult dystopian series The Hunger Games and the children’s fantasy series The Underland Chronicles. She grew up as the youngest of four children in a military family. Her father, Lieutenant Colonel Michael John Collins, served in the U.S. Air Force in the Korean and Vietnam Wars, and other members of her family fought in both World Wars.

Because of her father’s career, Collins moved often, living mostly in Europe, especially Brussels, Belgium, and in the eastern United States. As a young girl, she liked reading, gymnastics, and exploring the woods with friends. She later studied theater and writing: she graduated from the Alabama School of Fine Arts in Birmingham in 1980, earned a Bachelor of Arts from Indiana University Bloomington in 1985 with a double major in theater and telecommunications, and received an MFA in dramatic writing from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts in 1989.

Television, books, and The Hunger Games

Collins began her career in 1991 writing for children’s television. She worked on Nickelodeon and Nick Jr. shows including Clarissa Explains It All, The Mystery Files of Shelby Woo, Little Bear, Oswald, and Wow! Wow! Wubbzy!. She was also head writer for the PBS spin-off Clifford’s Puppy Days, and received a Writers Guild of America nomination in animation for co-writing the 2001 Christmas special Santa, Baby!. While working on the Kids’ WB show Generation O!, she met children’s author James Proimos, which inspired her to write children’s books herself.

Her first major book series, The Underland Chronicles, began with Gregor the Overlander in 2003. Collins drew the idea from Alice in Wonderland, imagining that a child today might be more likely to fall down a manhole than a rabbit hole. Between 2003 and 2007, she wrote five Underland books. She also wrote the rhyming picture book When Charlie McButton Lost Power, illustrated by Mike Lester, in 2005.

In September 2008, Scholastic Press released The Hunger Games. The book was partly inspired by the Greek myth of Theseus and the Minotaur, and partly by her father’s Air Force career, which gave her insight into poverty, starvation, and the effects of war. Catching Fire followed in September 2009, and Mockingjay in August 2010. The series became a major bestseller, and Lions Gate Entertainment acquired worldwide rights to the film adaptation. Collins adapted the first novel for film herself. The three books became four films, with Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss Everdeen, Josh Hutcherson as Peeta Mellark, and Liam Hemsworth as Gale Hawthorne.

Collins later returned to Panem with The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes in 2020, set 64 years before the original trilogy, and Sunrise on the Reaping in 2025, centered on the 50th Hunger Games won by Haymitch Abernathy. Her work has reached readers in print, film, and digital editions, and in 2010 she was named one of Time magazine’s most influential people. The force of her writing comes from clear stakes: children, power, hunger, fear, and survival. That directness is why her books continue to hold a strong place with readers.