Renee Ahdieh
Renée Ahdieh is an American-Korean author, best known for her New York Times best-selling series The Wrath and the Dawn. Her books have been translated into many languages. She graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.[1] Currently, she resides in Charlotte, North Carolina with her husband, Victor, and their dog, Mushu. Renée Ahdieh is now creating a web novel version of “The Wrath and the Dawn” with SilvesterVitale on the platform Webtoon.
Renée Ahdieh | |
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Ahdieh at the 2017 Texas Book Festival | |
Occupation | Writer |
Nationality | American |
Period | 2010s–present |
Genre | Young adult fantasy |
Website | |
reneeahdieh |
Early life
Renée Ahdieh spent her first years of childhood growing up in her mother's homeland of Seoul, South Korea. As a young child, she enjoyed reading and grew fond of fantasy, romance, and history. As a result of her heritage, Ahdieh looked for novels that supported diversity, even at an early age. She enjoyed and later drew inspiration from a variety of authors, such as Paulo Coelho, Isabel Allende, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Rabindranath Tagore, Diana Gabaldon, Naguib Mahfouz, Anne Rice, Salman Rushdie, and Libba Bray.[2]
Career
On May 12, 2015, G. P. Putnam's Sons released Ahdieh's novel, The Wrath and the Dawn. She envisioned a re-imagining of One Thousand and One Nights, which is a famous collection of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and East Asian folktales. She also drew inspiration from her husband's Persian family heritage.[3] The sequel, The Rose and the Dagger, was published on April 26, 2016. Though she first planned this series as a trilogy, her publisher encouraged her to focus on just two novels to avoid series fatigue.[4] In addition to the two novels, Ahdieh also released three short stories in this re-imagined world within a few months of each other in 2016.
Imagine Entertainment optioned the film rights to The Wrath and the Dawn in 2016.
On May 16, 2017, Ahdieh released Flame in the Mist, the first book in her new series with nods to the East Asian stories she loved as a child. For this novel, she found inspiration in strong female characters, such as Hermione Granger and Mulan. Since she felt out-of-place at times as a mixed-race child, she often writes novels that expand on different perspectives and hopes to create characters that show varying levels of strength.[4] This novel features a strong heroine who disguises herself as a man to defeat a dark clan that attempted to slaughter her just before an arranged marriage. A sequel titled Smoke in the Sun was released June 5, 2018.
The Beautiful, the beginning of a new series set in 1872 New Orleans, was published on October 8, 2019.
Her current agent is Barbara Poelle of the Irene Goodman Literature Agency.[4]
Publications
- The Wrath and the Dawn
- The Wrath & the Dawn: May 12, 2015
- The Rose & the Dagger: April 26, 2016
- The Wrath and the Dawn Short story
- Crown and the Arrow: March 1, 2016
- Moth and the Flame: March 22, 2016
- Mirror and the Maze: April 26, 2016
- The Flame in the Mist
- Flame in the Mist: May 16, 2017
- Smoke in the Sun: June 5, 2018
- The Flame in the Mist Short Story
- Ókami: 2018
- Yumi: 2018
- The Beautiful
- The Beautiful: October 8, 2019
- The Damned: 2020
Awards
- #1 New York Times Bestseller[5]
- USA Today Bestseller
- #4 on the Summer 2015 Kids' Indie Next List!
- Amazon's Best Books of the Year for 2015 – Young Adult
- 2015 A New York Public Library Best Book for Teens
- 2015 A Seventeen Magazine Best Book
- A YALSA 2016 Best Fiction for Young Adults Pick
- Junior Library Guild Selection
- 2015 A Booklist Top Ten First Novel for Young Adults
References
- "Biography: Renée Ahdieh". Teenreads. Retrieved 2019-01-12.
- "Renée's Favorite Authors". Goodreads. Retrieved 2019-01-12.
- Parkin, Lisa (2015-05-19). "Interview With Author Renee Ahdieh on "The Wrath and the Dawn"". Huffington Post. Retrieved 2019-01-12.
- Grochowski, Sara. "Q & A with Renee Ahdieh". Publishers Weekly. Retrieved 16 November 2017.
- "Young Adult E-Book Books - Best Sellers - April 10, 2016". The New York Times. Retrieved 13 September 2018.