Ellen Hopkins

Ellen Hopkins was born March 26, 1955, in Long Beach, California, and studied at Crafton Hills College, the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the Institute of Children's Literature. She spent the first part of her writing career on children's nonfiction -- roughly twenty titles on subjects from fighter jets to orcas -- before turning to the young-adult verse novel with 2004's Crank, fictionalizing her own daughter's addiction to crystal meth. Crank became a bestseller and launched a trilogy (with Glass and Fallout) that established the template for Hopkins's career: unflinching free-verse novels tackling addiction, abuse, sex trafficking, and mental illness, built as connected pairs and trios rather than open-ended series -- Burned/Smoke, Impulse/Perfect, and Tricks/Traffick each follow their own separate casts. She has also written prose fiction for adults (Triangles, Collateral, the Love Lies Beneath duology) alongside a continuing run of standalone YA verse novels. A frequent target of school book challenges, particularly for Burned, Hopkins has become an outspoken advocate against censorship. She received a Silver Pen Award in 2006 and was inducted into the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame in 2015. She lives in the Carson City/Washoe Valley area of Nevada with her husband.