Rick Riordan

Biography

Rick Riordan (b. 1964) was a middle-school English and history teacher in San Antonio, Texas, for fifteen years before becoming a full-time novelist. He created Percy Jackson as a bedtime story for his son Haley, who has ADHD and dyslexia and was struggling in school. Haley loved Greek mythology — the one subject that engaged him — and asked his father to tell longer stories about the Greek gods. Riordan invented Percy as a demigod whose disabilities were divine gifts, and when the bedtime story ran out, Haley asked him to write it down. The novel was published in 2005 and launched the most successful mythology-based children's series in publishing history.

Rick Riordan at a glance