Rick Riordan

Riordan's first full-length novel was Big Red Tequila, which became the first book in the Tres Navarre series. His breakthrough was The Lightning Thief (2005), the first novel in the five-volume Percy Jackson & the Olympians series, which placed a group of modern-day adolescents in a Greco-Roman mythological setting. Since then, Riordan has written The Heroes of Olympus, a sequel to the Percy Jackson series; The Kane Chronicles, a trilogy of similar premise focusing on Egyptian mythology; and Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard, a trilogy of similar premise focusing on Norse mythology. Riordan also helped Scholastic Press develop The 39 Clues series and its spinoffs, and penned its first book, The Maze of Bones. In 2021, he published Daughter of the Deep. His fourth spin-off series set in the Percy Jackson universe, The Nico di Angelo Adventures, began on May 2, 2023, with the release of The Sun and the Star, co-written with author Mark Oshiro. Originally planned as a standalone novel, positive critical reception lead to the publishing of a sequel The Court of the Dead in 2025.

Life and career

Rick Riordan was born and raised in San Antonio, Texas. Riordan's family came from Cork, Ireland. He graduated from Alamo Heights High School, and first attended the music program at North Texas State University, wanting to be a guitarist. He transferred to the University of Texas at Austin and studied English and History. He received his teaching certification in those subjects from the University of Texas at San Antonio. He taught English and Social Studies for eight years at Presidio Hill School in San Francisco. In 2021, Riordan completed an online master's degree in Gaelic literature offered by the University College Cork.

Rick married Rebecca "Becky" Klahn in 1985 on the couple's shared birthday. They have two sons, Haley and Patrick. They moved from San Antonio to Boston in June 2013, in conjunction with older son Haley starting college in Boston.

Riordan has created several successful book series. Tres Navarre, an adult mystery series about a Texas private eye, won the Shamus, Anthony, and Edgar Awards.

He conceived the idea for the Percy Jackson series as bedtime stories about ancient Greek heroes for his son Haley. Haley had been diagnosed with ADHD and dyslexia, inspiring Riordan to make the titular protagonist hyperactive and dyslexic. Riordan published the first novel in the series, The Lightning Thief, in 2005. Four sequels followed, with the last, The Last Olympian, in 2009. Prior to Percy Jackson, Riordan had written the Tres Navarres series, a series of mystery novels for adult readers.

His Percy Jackson & the Olympians series features the titular twelve-year-old who discovers he is the modern-day son of the ancient Greek god Poseidon. 20th Century Fox purchased the film rights and released two feature film adaptations between 2010 and 2013. Following the success of Percy Jackson, Riordan created The Kane Chronicles, which features a modern-day Egyptian pantheon and two new sibling protagonists, Sadie and Carter Kane. Riordan also created a sequel series to Percy Jackson, The Heroes of Olympus.

Riordan also helped create the children's book series The 39 Clues. He authored several of its books, including The Maze of Bones, which topped The New York Times Best Seller list on September 28, 2008. He also wrote the introduction to the Puffin Classics edition of Roger Lancelyn Green's Tales of the Greek Heroes, in which he states that the book influenced him to write his Greek mythology series.

In 2022, Riordan co-wrote the pilot for the Percy Jackson and the Olympians TV series on Disney+ and serves as an executive producer for the show. Disney had earlier acquired Fox in 2019, allowing it to gain the rights to adapt the Percy Jackson novels. He won an Emmy Award as an executive producer when the show's first season won Outstanding Young Teen Series, and a second Emmy as a writer when the pilot episode won Outstanding Writing for a Young Teen Program at the 3rd Children's and Family Emmy Awards.