Before Suzanne Collins wrote her bestselling novel “The Hunger Games,” she was a college student in Bloomington.
Collins graduated from IU in 1985 with a double major in theater and telecommunications. She also met her future husband, Cap Pryor, while at IU. According to Sheila Everett, Scholastic’s senior publicist, Collins has fond memories of her time at IU but was unavailable for further comment due to her hectic schedule.
The entire “Hunger Games” series has sold more than a million copies since 2008. Told from the view of 16-year-old Katniss Everdeen, the series features a future dystopia in which 24 children must kill each other each year in an event televised across the nation.
To write how her characters live in the wilderness and fend off murderers, Collins remembered her father’s stories about hunting in order to put meat on the table during the Great Depression. She also read a stack of wilderness survival guides.
English professor Raymond Hedin teaches the alumna’s book in both his children’s and young adult literature classes as the ultimate survival tale.
“Stories are driven by wishes and fears. The wish to succeed, the fear of death, it’s all found in ‘The Hunger Games,’” he says. “The survival of the world hinges on Katniss. While we might not be in charge of saving our own world, we relate to her stress with the pressure to succeed we find in our own lives.”
