Ellen Hopkins is a celebrated name among Young Adult novel writers. She has published several New York Times bestselling novels. Her key works include Crank, Identical and Burned. These novels discuss delicate teenage issues such as, psychological problems, prostitution, drug addiction and other such issues that trouble young generation of today.
Born on March 26, 1955 in Long Beach, California, Ellen Louise Hopkins was adopted by Valerie and Albert C. Wagner. She grew up in Palm Springs with the Hollywood celebrities around. Her father was not a rich man initially but eventually earned himself a fortune working in the steel industry. Her parents played an inspirational role in her life. She learned the virtue of hard work and honesty from her father, while her mother stimulated love of language in her. Being around a voracious reader, she developed a keen interest in literature and started reading sophisticated writings at a considerably young age. Her birth mother, Toni Chandler, was also a prolific poetry writer.
Hopkins began writing as soon as she learned its art. Her earlier works included poetry mostly but it was not until 1992 that she started writing professionally. Encouraged by her teachers, she used to participate in every creative writing contest and won all of them. At the young age of nine, she published a Japanese styled poem titled Haiku in the Palm Springs Desert Sun. She received her education from a private school when she moved to Santa Ynez Valley. She was a keen student who had nothing but straight A’s all through high school. In 1973, she earned her graduation from Santa Ynez Valley Union High School. Afterwards, she set out to pursue journalism and enrolled herself in Crafton Hills College and UCSB.
A twist of fate changed her career plan as she dropped out of college in order to get married and start a business. She had two sons out of her first marriage, which did not last longer and she had to sell her video store business later. Although a series of tragic events followed her divorce, she survived the rise and fall of life and eventually met her second husband John Hopkins, whom she married in 1985. As she moved to northern Nevada, in 1990, she took up her passion for writing. She did her stint of freelance writing for newspapers and magazines before she shifted her interest toward children’s nonfiction. She produced about twenty titles in the respective genre which include Orcas: High Seas Supermen and Air Devils. Eventually, she had her first novels published after struggling for a while as a writer.
Hopkins’ debut novel, entitled Crank, was published in 2004. It is loosely based on her adopted daughter’s addiction of crystal meth. The teenage drug addiction and sexual issues inspired Hopkins to explore these delicate subjects. The sensitivity of these issues had her book banned in many places. However, the content of the book also made it a required reading material for drug court programs and several high schools. She published the sequel, Glass, in 2007 and the third installment, Fallout, followed three years later. Another two-novel based young adult series, Burned (2006), was written in the free verse format. It charts the life and emotional problems of a seventeen-year-old who grows up in a dysfunctional family with an abusive father. Besides young adult novels, Ellen Hopkins also penned novels for her adult audience which include Triangles (2011) and Collateral (2012) and her next adult novel is due in the spring of 2015, titled Tangled.
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