Suzanne Collins

Suzanne Collins was born in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1962, the daughter of a U.S. Air Force officer who served in the Korean and Vietnam wars. She started out writing for television, on Nickelodeon and Nick Jr. shows including Clarissa Explains It All, The Mystery Files of Shelby Woo and Little Bear. Her first books were the five novels of the Underland Chronicles (2003–2007), beginning with Gregor the Overlander, a children's fantasy she conceived by imagining a child falling down a manhole rather than a rabbit hole.

Scholastic published The Hunger Games in September 2008. Collins drew partly on the Greek myth of Theseus and the Minotaur and partly on her father's Air Force career, which gave her an understanding of poverty, starvation and the effects of war. Catching Fire (2009) and Mockingjay (2010) completed the trilogy. She later returned to Panem with two prequels: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (2020), set 64 years before the first book and following an 18-year-old Coriolanus Snow as a mentor in the 10th Hunger Games, and Sunrise on the Reaping (2025), about the 50th Games, won by Haymitch Abernathy.

Read the original trilogy first and in order: The Hunger Games, Catching Fire, Mockingjay. Then turn to the prequels. The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes makes the future President Snow its protagonist, a choice that divided critics and fans on release; it lands harder once you already know what Snow becomes. Sunrise on the Reaping tells the story of Haymitch Abernathy's own Games, and is best read after you have met him in the trilogy.

Younger readers who are not ready for Panem can start with Gregor the Overlander, the first book of her five-volume Underland Chronicles, a children's fantasy series.