Ellen Hopkins Bio

I am SO happy to be introducing everyone to Ellen Hopkins this week.  She's an amazing writer and inspiring and even her life is inspiring.

Hopkins was adopted at birth by two wonderful people, Albert and Valeria Wagner.  Though they were an older coupld, they worked hard for their money and, Hopkins says, instilled the best values in her.  They always encouraged her writing, which was published for the first time at the age of nine (she wrote a haiku.)

But if anyone knows anything about Hopkin's writing, her life has been anything but easy.  She had two children from her first marriage, Jason and Cristal (Cristal being who the Crank series is based on.)  She entered into what she defines as a "rebound", which ended up being an extremely abusive relationship.  When she finally removed herself from it, the abusive boyfriend kidnapped their daughter, Kelly, for three years (though, happily, the recovery was finally made.)

They adopted Orion (Cristal's son) in 1996, when he was just a baby, though he is a teenager now.

Hopkins met her birth mother, who is also a writer, about ten years after she met her now-husband, John Hopkins.  She lives with him in Nevada, though they both grew up in California.

Hopkins is most known for her YA book, Crank being probably her most successful novel to date.  However, she also writes adult literature.  Triangles is one that I can vouch for that is very good.  All of her novels are poems that tell a story.  A compelling, intricate and wonderful story.

She also doesn't shy away from the hard topics.  Most of her novels, for youth, deal with drugs, sex and even sucides and how teens deal with these things (or, how they don't deal with them as the case may be.)

Really, if you want more information on her, you should visit her website.  It's wonderfully well done.