Remember that tease we got about a Veronica Roth announcement due this weekend? Well your wait is over because it’s here! New York Magazine recently interviewed Veronica Roth where she talks Divergent, dystopian literature, and building her empire!
On March 31, 2010, 21-year-old Veronica Roth wrote a blog post titled “You + $$$ = ?” Roth was a creative-writing major at Northwestern who planned to support herself as a proofreader after graduation. The exercise on her frequently updated blog was about imagining success: What would she do if she suddenly had the resources of Stephenie Meyer or J. K. Rowling? Roth’s answers were unapologetically practical—buy a house in Wisconsin, invest, donate to charity—and her wildest dream involved jumping into a pool of mini-marshmallows. Mostly, the aspiring young-adult author just wanted to work. “Day jobs? Pshh. Who needs them? If I could set up a nice little room in which I could write all day and supply myself with infinite tea, I’d be pretty much good.”
Two weeks later, Roth sold her first book, a dystopian YA novel about a society segregated by moral virtues and a girl who doesn’t fit in. Divergent was published in May 2011 and spent eleven consecutive weeks on the New YorkTimes’ children’s best-seller list; the sequel, Insurgent, debuted at No. 1 a year later. The series has remained there ever since, thanks to a wildly enthusiastic, bordering on maniacal, audience that includes not just teenage girls but their brothers, their mothers, and a growing number of childless adults (Divergentcoincided with the rise of The Hunger Games, the industry-wide scramble to succeed Twilight, and the resultant YA dominance in the pop-cultural landscape). Since no popular YA series is without a movie franchise, Summit Entertainment—the studio behind Twilight—will release Divergent early next year, and its cast (Kate Winslet, Next Big Thing Shailene Woodley) suggests similar expectations for the film version. Meanwhile, the contents of the trilogy’s upcoming final book, Allegiant (coming out October 22), are being guarded like Katniss Everdeen in the first half of Mockingjay. So if Roth isn’t quite at Twilight or Hunger Games levels, then she would seem to be on her way—or far enough along, at least, to tackle a few things on the list she wrote three years ago. Find a house, maybe. Figure out what else grown-ups do with large sums of money.
For the complete story, click here!
