Rick Riordan

Richard Russell Riordan Jr. is an American author, best known for his Camp Half-Blood Chronicles, which includes the Percy Jackson & the Olympians series, The Heroes of Olympus series, The Trials of Apollo series, and The Nico di Angelo Adventures series. Riordan's books have been translated into forty-two languages and sold more than thirty million copies in the United States. 20th Century Fox adapted the first two books of his Percy Jackson series as part of a film series, which Riordan was not involved with. Riordan currently serves as a co-creator and an executive producer on the television series adaption of his Percy Jackson series that was released on Disney+ in 2023 and for which he won two Emmy Awards. Riordan's books have also spawned other related media, such as graphic novels and short story collections.
Riordan's first full-length novel was Big Red Tequila, which became the first book in the Tres Navarre series. His big breakthrough was The Lightning Thief, the first novel in the five-volume Percy Jackson and 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, again 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 third standalone novel, The Sun and the Star, co-written with author Mark Oshiro, was published on May 2, 2023.

Life and career

Riordan was born and raised in San Antonio, Texas. 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.
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 series on Disney+ and is serving 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. Riordan 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.

Mythology

Riordan's works of children's literature center around an adaptation of mythology for modern readers and for children. He has used Greek, Roman, Egyptian, and Norse and combinations thereof in a total of five separate novel series. The mythology used in his works possesses elements unique to his series, but has a largely historical basis. Some of its characteristics include an emphasis on human-divine interaction and a preference for anglicized names. Examples include:

Greco-Roman mythology: Camp Half-Blood Chronicles
* Percy Jackson & the Olympians
* The Heroes of Olympus
* The Trials of Apollo
* The Nico di Angelo Adventures
Egyptian mythology: The Kane Chronicles
Norse mythology: Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard

Riordan's sources for the mythology used in his books are surmised from isolated comments on the subject during various interviews, as he has never released a list of any kind. These sources begin with the myths and the derivations thereof that he was exposed to as a child. Unnamed "novels on Norse mythology", suggested to him by a teacher who noticed his interest in The Lord of the Rings, were his first introduction to mythology and continue to influence his writing today. The author also claims to have read such notable classics as The Iliad and The Odyssey, and to use his "general knowledge" of a given mythology as a basis for his stories. As far as Greek mythology is concerned, Riordan has stated that Tales of the Greek Heroes by Roger Lancelyn Green—called by its author a "retelling of the Greek myths... based on multitudinous sources"—was one of his first introductions to that type of myth, and is in part responsible for his decision to interpret myths in his own books. Finally, Riordan has stated that he uses modern sources such as The Theoi Project for fact-checking purposes, as needed.
None of his novels include a list of references. Percy Jackson's Greek Gods and Percy Jackson's Greek Heroes alone possess "Background Reading" sections, listing sources such as Robert Fagles's translation of The Aeneid and web sites such as the Encyclopedia Mythica.

Awards

Rick Riordan has been the most-awarded Goodreads Choice Award winner since surpassing Stephen King in 2020. Riordan was the recipient of the Goodreads Choice Award in Middle Grade and Children's category every year from 2011 to 2021, collecting 11 awards so far.

Year	Award	Category	Recipient	Result
1998	Shamus Award	Best First PI Novel	Big Red Tequila	Won
1998	Anthony Award	Best Paperback Original	Big Red Tequila	Won
1999	Edgar Award	Best Paperback Original	The Widower's Two-Step	Won
2002	Saint Mary’s Hall Master Teacher Award
2008	Mark Twain Award		The Lightning Thief	Won
2009	Rebecca Caudill Young Readers' Book Award		The Lightning Thief	Won
2009	Mark Twain Award		The Sea of Monsters	Won
2010	School Library Journal Best Book List		The Red Pyramid
2011	CBC's Children's Choice Book Award	5th–6th Grade Book of the Year	The Red Pyramid	Won
2011	CBC's Children's Choice Book Award	Author of the Year	The Lost Hero	Won
2011	Wyoming Soaring Eagle Book Award		The Last Olympian	Won
2011	Milner Award		Percy Jackson & the Olympians series	Won
2011	Goodreads Choice Award	Middle Grade and Children’s	The Son of Neptune	Won
2012	Indian Paintbrush Book Award		The Red Pyramid	Won
2012	Goodreads Choice Award	Middle Grade and Children’s	The Mark of Athena	Won
2012	Geffen Award	Best Translated Fantasy Book	The Son of Neptune	Won
2013		Avid Readers	The Mark of Athena	Won
2013	Goodreads Choice Award	Middle Grade and Children’s	The House of Hades	Won
2014	Magic Pearl Award	Avid Readers	The House of Hades	Won
2014	Goodreads Choice Award	Middle Grade and Children’s	The Blood of Olympus	Won
2015	Goodreads Choice Award	Middle Grade and Children’s	The Sword of Summer	Won
2016	Goodreads Choice Award	Middle Grade and Children’s	The Hidden Oracle	Won
2016	Geffen Award	Best Translated YA Book	The Blood of Olympus	Won
2017	Stonewall Book Award	Children's Literature	The Hammer of Thor	Won
2017	Dragon Award	Best Young Adult / Middle-Grade Novel	The Hammer of Thor	Won
2017	Goodreads Choice Award	Middle Grade and Children’s	The Ship of the Dead	Won
2017	Geffen Award	Best Translated YA Book	The Hidden Oracle	Won
2018	Goodreads Choice Award	Middle Grade and Children’s	The Burning Maze	Won
2018	Geffen Award	Best Translated YA Book	The Dark Prophecy	Won
2019	Goodreads Choice Award	Middle Grade and Children’s	The Tyrant's Tomb	Won
2019	Geffen Award	Best Translated YA Book	The Ship of the Dead	Won
2020	Magic Pearl Award	Dreamers	The Tyrant's Tomb	Won
2020	Goodreads Choice Award	Middle Grade and Children’s	The Tower of Nero	Won
2021	Magic Pearl Award	Masters	The Tower of Nero	Won
2021	Goodreads Choice Award	Middle Grade and Children’s	Daughter of the Deep	Won
2022–2023	Junior Tome It List	Middle Grade Literature	Daughter of the Deep
2024	Geffen Award	Best Young Adult Book	The Chalice of the Gods	Won
2025	Children's and Family Emmy Awards	Outstanding Young Teen Series	Percy Jackson and the Olympians	Won
2025	Children's and Family Emmy Awards	Outstanding Writing for a Young Teen Series	Percy Jackson and the Olympians: "I Accidentally Vaporize My Pre-Algebra Teacher"	Won