Veronica Roth

Veronica Anne Roth is an American novelist and short story writer, born on August 19, 1988, in New York City and raised mainly in Barrington, Illinois. She came to public attention in the early 2010s with the Divergent trilogy, a series that sold more than 35 million copies worldwide. Roth is the youngest of three children. Her mother, Barbara Ross, is a painter, and Roth’s family life included her parents’ divorce when she was five and her mother’s remarriage to Frank Ross, a financial consultant. She is of German and Polish descent and has lived in the Chicago area with her husband, photographer Nelson Fitch, whom she married in 2011.

Roth’s early education took place in Barrington, where she attended Grove Avenue Elementary School, Barrington Middle School’s Prairie Campus, and Barrington High School. After one year at Carleton College, she transferred to Northwestern University for its creative writing program. She has said that her maternal grandparents were concentration camp survivors, and that their religious convictions pushed her mother away from religion. Roth herself learned about Christianity through a Christian Bible study during high school and has stayed with it. Those details give a plain outline of the family history, schooling, and faith background around which her imagination developed.

Her career moved with unusual speed. Roth wrote Divergent during winter break in her senior year at Northwestern University and found an agent by the following March. The publishing rights sold before she graduated from college in 2010, and the film rights sold in mid-March 2011, before the novel was printed in April of that year. Divergent was followed by Insurgent in 2012 and Allegiant in 2013. By fall 2013, her first two novels had sold more than five million copies worldwide, just as the film based on the first book was wrapping up.

The Divergent series soon moved to film. Roth sold the film rights to Summit Entertainment. Filming on Divergent began in April 2013, and the movie was released in March 2014. Insurgent was released on March 20, 2015, after Lionsgate officially greenlit the adaptation in 2014. The third book, Allegiant, was announced as two films; The Divergent Series: Allegiant was released on March 18, 2016, while the planned Ascendant theatrical release was canceled in favor of a television film and spinoff series, which were later also canceled. Roth also expanded the series through Tobias Eaton stories, including “Free Four,” “The Transfer,” “The Initiate,” “The Son,” “The Traitor,” and the collection Four: A Divergent Story Collection.

Beyond Divergent, Roth continued to write young adult novels, short stories, adult fiction, and novellas. Carve the Mark was published in 2017, followed by The Fates Divide in 2018. Her story collection The End and Other Beginnings appeared in 2019, and “Inertia” from that collection was optioned for film adaptation by Fox 2000 Pictures. Later works include Chosen Ones, Poster Girl, Arch-Conspirator, When Among Crows, and To Clutch a Razor. She has also been recognized by Goodreads awards for Divergent, Insurgent, and Allegiant.

In 2026, Roth announced a return to Divergent with a new duology. The Sixth Faction, scheduled for publication on October 6, 2026, is described as an alternate-universe reimagining in which Tris Prior does not transfer to the Dauntless faction, not as a prequel, sequel, or spinoff. Speaking to Elle, Roth said she wanted to return to the world of Divergent to resolve her “negative feelings” around the series and the criticism it received: “I put everything I learned into this.” For readers, Roth’s words continue to matter because they come from a writer willing to revisit her own work, measure what she has learned, and begin again on the page.