Veronica Roth Biography

     Veronica Roth is the writer of Divergent, Insurgent and Allegiant, the three books in the Divergent book series and the books behind the movie Divergent. At 25, she is a very young author and has already had so much success. Roth was born in New York City, but is from Chicago. She graduated from Northwestern University with a bachelors degree in creative writing. Her maternal grandparents were concentration camp survivors during World War Two, but their religious convictions pushed Roth's mother away from it. Roth is now Christian. In 2011, Roth married photographer Nelson Fitch and they now reside in the Chicago area. 

     Divergent was written during winter break of Roth's senior year of college. By the end of her college career, the movie rights to the movie were already sold. Roth did not intend for the setting to be in a futuristic Chicago, but states: "I wrote the rough draft and I felt like it needed a more grounded sense of place, and I looked at the city I had described, which is all these trains constantly moving, and this lake marsh, and these rivers. And I realized that it was Chicago already, and it was just because that's the city I've known and loved the longest." Many critics have described the book as having a fast pace for the reader to follow, with Susan Dominus from The New York Times stating, "brisk pacing, lavish flights of imagination and writing that occasionally startles with fine detail." Divergent won Favorite book of 2011 in 2011's Goodreads Choice Awards. The sequel to the Divergent movie, Insurgent is set to be released on March 20, 2015.

The video below is Veronica Roth talking about the Divergent movie: