About Suzanne Collins
The internationally bestselling author we whose writing will leave an impact for generations.
Her Early Life
Suzanne Collins is the internationally bestselling author of The Hunger Games series and The Underland Chronicles, known for stories that combine gripping adventure with sharp examinations of power, war, and survival.
Collins was born on the 10th of August, 1962 in Hartford, Connecticut. The youngest of four children, Collins grew up moving frequently due to her father’s career as an officer in the U.S. Air Force. She spent time in Indiana and Belgium before graduating from high school in Birmingham, Alabama. She earned a B.A. from Indiana University and an M.F.A. in Dramatic Writing from New York University.
I think people respond to dystopian stories because they’re ways of acting out anxieties that we have and fears that we have about the future. So much media’s coming at you over the Internet, your brain gets overloaded. You don’t know what to do with it. And one thing you can do with it is read a story.
Here’s a picture of me with a rat in Central Park. If you’ve read my fantasy series, The Underland Chronicles, you will have a clue as to why I chose this photo.
Her Journey as a Writer
Collins began her professional career in 1991 writing for children’s television. Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, she worked on numerous youth-oriented series, including Clarissa Explains It All, The Mystery Files of Shelby Woo, Little Bear, Oswald, Wow! Wow! Wubbzy!, and Clifford’s Puppy Days, where she served as Head Writer. Her background in television storytelling would later shape her distinctive pacing and dialogue-driven prose.
While continuing to work in television, Collins turned to children’s literature with Gregor the Overlander (2003), the first book in The Underland Chronicles. The five-book fantasy war series became a New York Times bestseller and was praised for its vivid world-building and willingness to address serious themes—such as genocide and biological warfare—within a story for young readers. The series has been published internationally in more than 20 languages.
In 2008, Collins published The Hunger Games, the first novel in a dystopian trilogy inspired by classical mythology, reality television, and her lifelong exposure to military history through her father, a Vietnam War veteran. The series—The Hunger Games, Catching Fire, and Mockingjay—became a global phenomenon, later expanded by two prequels, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (2020) and Sunrise on the Reaping (2025). The books have spent years on bestseller lists worldwide, been translated into over 55 languages, and sold more than 100 million copies globally.
Collins has been closely involved in the screen adaptations of her work, serving as a screenwriter and executive producer on all six Hunger Games films. The franchise has grossed over $3.3 billion worldwide. A live stage adaptation of The Hunger Games is set to premiere in London in 2025.
In addition to her novels, Collins has written acclaimed picture books, including When Charlie McButton Lost Power (2005) and Year of the Jungle: Memories from the Home Front (2013), an autobiographical story reflecting on her childhood during her father’s deployment to Vietnam.
Suzanne Collins was named to the TIME 100 list in 2010 and received the Authors Guild Award for Distinguished Service to the Literary Community in 2016. She is a nominee for the 2026 Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award.
