Veronica Roth

Veronica Roth is an American author who became one of the defining voices of the 2010s young adult dystopian boom with Divergent, published in 2011 while she was still a college senior. The series is set in a faction-divided future Chicago where teenagers must choose a single defining virtue to live by, and follows Tris Prior as she discovers she doesn't fit neatly into any one faction, a trait that makes her both powerful and dangerous in her society's eyes. The trilogy, completed with Insurgent and Allegiant, sold tens of millions of copies and was adapted into a film franchise starring Shailene Woodley, though the series of films ended before adapting the final book as a planned television movie, leaving the story incomplete on screen. Roth has since written across other speculative fiction, including the Carve the Mark duology and Chosen Ones, an adult fantasy reimagining what happens to Chosen One heroes after they save the world, showing a deliberate move toward more morally complex, adult-oriented storytelling than her YA debut. New readers should start with Divergent to meet Tris and the faction system from the beginning. Roth continues to write actively across young adult and adult speculative fiction.