Victoria Aveyard

About Victoria Aveyard

Victoria Aveyard was born on July 27, 1990, in East Longmeadow, Massachusetts, and grew up in the western part of the state. She studied screenwriting at the University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts, graduating in 2012, and worked on screenplays before turning her attention to prose fiction. Roughly a year after finishing college—and facing the student loan debt common to many recent graduates—she completed the manuscript that would become her debut novel.

That novel, Red Queen, was published in 2015 and quickly became a bestseller, launching a four-book series set in a world divided between a ruling class with supernatural silver blood and an oppressed red-blooded majority. The series' popularity established Aveyard as one of the leading voices in modern YA fantasy, and she has continued the tradition with the Realm Breaker trilogy, which reached #1 on the New York Times bestseller list.

The Red Queen World

Beyond the four core Red Queen novels, Aveyard expanded the series with companion novellas, including the two collected in Cruel Crown: Queen Song and Steel Scars. These shorter works fill in the backstories of supporting characters and deepen the series' portrait of a society built on rigid class divisions, betrayal, and armed uprising.

Reach and Reception

Aveyard's success with Red Queen led to further series, further bestseller status, and continued work as a screenwriter for Sony Pictures. Her books remain widely read by teenage audiences drawn to their fast-paced plotting and high-stakes political intrigue. That same popularity has put them in front of school library review committees; across this catalog, titles from the Red Queen world have been recorded as banned in 8 titles spanning multiple states and districts.