User:Kikibower/Ellen Hopkins

Ellen Hopkins (born March 26, 1955) is a novelist who has published several New York Times bestselling novels that are popular among the teenage and young adult audience.

Career
Hopkins began her writing career in 1992. She started with nonfiction books for children, including Air Devils and Orcas: High Seas Supermen. She has written 56 such non-fiction books.

Hopkins had a daughter who became addicted to crystal meth, or "crank." In 2002, her struggle inspired Hopkins to begin writing her debut novel, Crank, meant to express the horrible influences of drug abuse and addiction. Hopkins has since written several verse novels on teenage struggles, including Burned, Impulse, Identical, Glass, Tricks, and Fallout. Glass is the sequel to Crank, and Fallout, the third and final book in the series, was released on September 14, 2010. Perfect is scheduled to be released September 13, 2011, and is a companion novel to Impulse. Hopkins also plans on releasing a sequel to Burned, Smoke, in 2013.

Hopkins decided that she wanted to move on to a more adult audience. Most of her readers have been following her since 2004 with Crank. Now Hopkins feels that those faithful readers have grown up. On her website she says "this adult readership has come to appreciate verse as story as much as my younger readers do." She will continue to write young adult novels, as teenage characters appeal to her more than others.

Her adult novel Collateral will come out in the fall of 2012. The novel is about deployment and how the families that are left behind are affected. Hopkins wants us to remember that as our men and women return from the Middle East, they come home profoundly changed. Coping with that transformation can be challenging for the soldiers and for their loved ones. This book may help readers open their minds and hearts to the new lifestyles they will be living.

Crank Novels

 * Crank (2004)   (YA)
 * Glass (2007)   (YA)
 * Fallout (2010)   (YA)
 * Flirtin' With The Monster, editor (2009)   (YA)

Burned Novels

 * Burned (2006)   (YA)
 * Smoke (2013)   (YA)

Impulse Novels

 * Impulse (2007)   (YA)
 * Perfect (2011)   (YA)

Triangles Novels

 * Triangles (2011)   (A)
 * Tilt (2012)   (YA)

Other Novels

 * Identical (2008)
 * Tricks (2009)
 * Collateral (2012)

Personal life
Hopkins was adopted by Albert and Valeria Wagner when they were 72 and 42, respectively. Her first poem was published in the Palm Springs Desert Sun when she was nine. She attended high school in Santa Ynez Valley and went on to study journalism at the University of California, Santa Barbara before dropping out to start a family and a business. She had two children; Jason and Cristal. When her marriage failed, she sold her business and began freelance work. Around 1985, she married John Hopkins, her current husband, and had another child, Kelly. They also adopted Cristal's son, her grandson, Orion. In 1990, Ellen Hopkins and her family moved to northern Nevada. During this time she decided to write for a living. She started out freelancing newspaper and magazine articles, then moved from there into children’s nonfiction.

Later in life, she found her biological mother, Toni Chandler, who (ironically) was also a writer and poet. Hopkins believes most of her writing talent originates from her own talent and also from her adoptive mother. She also considers her fifth grade teacher the first person to encourage her to become a professional writer.

On her website, Hopkins stated that she travels around 100 days a year to do school and library visits, book signings and festivals, writers conferences, and other events. To see where Ellen will be newt you can check out her "appearances" page on her website.

Poetry
Ellen Hopkins has been writing poetry for as long as she can remember. Although she didn't know her birth mother in her earlier years, Hopkins found out that her birth mother also writes poetry, and has been for her entire life.

Please enjoy this excerpt of Hopkins' poem, Dry Spell.

Dry Spell
You are like rain, forecasted to quench a summer‚ thirsting, thirst grown beyond easy need, to life or death. I watch the clouds, approaching windward mountains, slate bruising black beneath expectation. The western window darkens as, laden, the curtain falls, descends to veil peaks and rifts, draws nearer. Is it thunder that I hear? Or is the sudden rumble but the flurry of hurried birds, on wing against unceasing drought?

To read the rest of this poem please visit her website.