Victoria Aveyard

Victoria Aveyard was born on July 27, 1990, in East Longmeadow, a small town in western Massachusetts. Both of her parents are public school teachers. She grew up on fantasy books and adventure movies, and at 18 she moved across the country to study at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.

At USC, film was the plan. Aveyard graduated from the screenwriting program in 2012 and soon turned up in the Hollywood trades: in 2014, Sony teamed with her on an original spec script called Eternal. Her first real breakout came from somewhere else, though. Fresh out of school and carrying student debt, she decided to write a novel the year after graduating. She never went through the usual round of query letters. Agent Suzie Townsend found her through connections from the USC writing program.

That novel was Red Queen, published by HarperTeen in 2015. The pitch fits in one line: in a kingdom split by the color of blood, Silvers have powers while Reds serve them and die in their wars. Mare Barrow, a Red thief, finds out she has a power of her own. Universal bought the film rights before the book even hit shelves. By the end of the year, it had won the Goodreads Choice Award for best debut, voted on by readers.

The series grew fast. Glass Sword came out in 2016, King's Cage in 2017 and War Storm, the finale, in 2018. Along the way came the novellas Queen Song and Steel Scars, collected as Cruel Crown (2016), and later the collection Broken Throne (2019), with new stories for readers who wanted more time in Norta. Each book ran longer than the last, and so did the list of narrators.

Aveyard writes like someone trained for the screen. Chapters end on hooks, the action reads visually and the twists land like act breaks. The same themes keep coming back: inequality, propaganda, who holds power and what they do with it, and the question of whom to trust. She often points to classic epic fantasy as a foundation, and her next project made that obvious.

In 2021 she launched Realm Breaker, the first book of an epic fantasy trilogy with a sprawling map, a mismatched band of heroes and a threat that crosses kingdoms. It debuted at number one on the New York Times young adult hardcover list. The trilogy continued with Blade Breaker (2022) and wrapped up with Fate Breaker (2024).

On screen, Red Queen is still waiting. The Universal film never happened, and in 2021 the project became a series in development at Peacock, with Elizabeth Banks attached and Aveyard writing the pilot herself. As of October 2026, nothing has premiered. Meanwhile she keeps publishing and showing up at book festivals across the United States.