Renée Ahdieh
Renée Ahdieh | |
---|---|
Occupation | Writer |
Nationality | American |
Period | 2010s–present |
Genre | Young adult fantasy |
Website | |
reneeahdieh |
Renée Ahdieh is an American-Korean author, best known for her New York Times best-selling series The Wrath & the Dawn. Her books have been translated into many languages.
Life[]
Renée Ahdieh spent her first years of childhood growing up in her mother's homeland of Seoul, South Korea. As a young child, she enjoyed reading and grew fond of fantasy, romance, and history. As a result of her heritage, Ahdieh looked for novels that supported diversity, even at an early age. She enjoyed and later drew inspiration from a variety of authors, such as Paulo Coelho, Isabel Allende, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Rabindranath Tagore, Diana Gabaldon, Naguib Mahfouz, Anne Rice, Salman Rushdie, and Libba Bray.[1]
Ahdieh graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.[2] Currently, she resides in Charlotte, North Carolina with her husband, Victor, and their dog, Mushu.
Career[]
On May 12, 2015, G. P. Putnam's Sons released Ahdieh's first novel, The Wrath & the Dawn. Ahdieh envisioned a re-imagining of One Thousand and One Nights, which is a famous collection of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and East Asian folktales. She also drew inspiration from her husband's Persian family heritage.[3] The sequel, The Rose & the Dagger, was published on April 26, 2016. Though she first planned this series as a trilogy, her publisher encouraged her to focus on just two novels to avoid series fatigue.[4] In addition to the two novels, Ahdieh released three short stories in this same world within a few months of each other in 2016.
Imagine Entertainment optioned the film rights to The Wrath & the Dawn in 2017.[5]
On May 16, 2017, Ahdieh released Flame in the Mist, the first book in a new series with nods to the East Asian stories she loved as a child. She found inspiration for the novel in strong female characters, such as Hermione Granger and Mulan, and stated that since she felt out-of-place at times as a mixed-race child, she often writes novels that expand on different perspectives and hopes to create characters that show varying levels of strength.[4] Flame in the Mist features a heroine who disguises herself as a man to defeat a dark clan that attempted to slaughter her just before an arranged marriage. A sequel titled Smoke in the Sun was released June 5, 2018.
The Beautiful, the beginning of a new series set in 1872 New Orleans, was published on October 8, 2019.
In November 2019, a web novel version of The Wrath & the Dawn began publishing as a Webtoon Originals comic, with Ahdieh collaborating with artist SilvesterVitale.[6] Ahdieh's current agent is Barbara Poelle of the Irene Goodman Literature Agency.[4]
Publications[]
- The Wrath and the Dawn
- The Wrath & the Dawn (May 12, 2015)
- The Rose & the Dagger ( April 26, 2016)
- The Wrath and the Dawn short stories
- Crown and the Arrow (March 1, 2016)
- Moth and the Flame (March 22, 2016)
- Mirror and the Maze (April 26, 2016)
- The Flame in the Mist
- Flame in the Mist (May 16, 2017)
- (June 5, 2018)
- Ókami (short story, 2018)
- Yumi (short story, 2018)
- The Beautiful
- The Beautiful (October 8, 2019)
- The Damned (July 7, 2020)
- The Righteous (December TBD, 2021)
Awards[]
- #1 New York Times Bestseller[7]
- USA Today Bestseller
- #4 on the Summer 2015 Kids' Indie Next List!
- Amazon's Best Books of the Year for 2015 – Young Adult
- 2015 A New York Public Library Best Book for Teens
- 2015 A Seventeen Magazine Best Book
- A YALSA 2016 Best Fiction for Young Adults Pick
- Junior Library Guild Selection
- 2015 A Booklist Top Ten First Novel for Young Adults
References[]
- ^ "Renée's Favorite Authors". Goodreads. Retrieved 2019-01-12.
- ^ "Biography: Renée Ahdieh". Teenreads. Retrieved 2019-01-12.
- ^ Parkin, Lisa (2015-05-19). "Interview With Author Renee Ahdieh on "The Wrath and the Dawn"". Huffington Post. Retrieved 2019-01-12.
- ^ Jump up to: a b c Grochowski, Sara. "Q & A with Renee Ahdieh". Publishers Weekly. Retrieved 16 November 2017.
- ^ Lewis, Andy (November 14, 2017). "Best-Selling YA Fantasy 'The Wrath and the Dawn' Optioned by Imagine". The Hollywood Reporter. Valence Media.
- ^ Ahdieh, Renée (November 4, 2019). "The Wrath & the Dawn". m.webtoons.com. Navier Corporation. Retrieved October 12, 2020.
- ^ "Young Adult E-Book Books - Best Sellers - April 10, 2016". The New York Times. Retrieved 13 September 2018.
External links[]
- American women novelists
- University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill alumni
- Living people
- 21st-century American novelists
- 21st-century American women writers
- American writers of young adult literature
- People from Seoul
- American people of South Korean descent