Veronica Roth

It’s been ages since we highlighted a popular author (who hadn’t recently passed), so to reignite the spotlight series we’re focussing on the young adult author Veronica Roth. Roth herself is a young adult, having been born in 1988 and celebrating her 26th birthday in August.

Roth of course wrote the Divergent series. The runaway smash hit featuring a dystopian future society where people are sorted into ‘factions’ based on their core values and personal ambitions. Beatrice is born into Abnegation but doesn’t really fit into any specific faction when tested and is hence considered Divergent. This is not something you want to advertise, so the story revolves around her defection to another faction and the discovery of her society’s political motivations and sinister plans.

Divergent spawned two sequels, Allegiant and Insurgent and a collection of short stories based on the point of view of another character called Four, and also a recent film starring Shailene Woodley.

Roth wrote Divergent during Summer break of her final year at Northwestern University studying creative writing, and sold the rights to the film just before she graduated. She lives with her husband Nelson Fitch in Chicago.