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Rick Riordan is best known for the Percy Jackson & the Olympians series. His other notable mythology-based series include The Kane Chronicles trilogy, The Heroes of Olympus pentalogy, the Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard trilogy, and The Trials of Apollo pentalogy.
Riordan grew up in San Antonio, Texas. He taught English and history for eight years at Presidio Hill School in San Francisco after studying both at the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Texas at San Antonio, and earning his teaching certification at the latter school. He published his first full-length novel, Big Red Tequila, in 1997; it was the first installment of an adult mystery series about Jackson "Tres" Navarre, a third-generation Texan with a PhD in Medieval Studies and English who works as an unlicensed private investigator. The novel was well received and earned Riordan the Shamus Award for Best First PI Novel.
However, Riordan did not achieve global fame until 2005 when he published The Lighting Thief, the first in the Percy Jackson series. Originally inspired by his son Haley, who had been diagnosed with ADHD and dyslexia, Riordan decided to craft a fantasy world in which typical learning disabilities were common side-effects for Greek demigods and indicative of their powers. For example, Percy’s ADHD is the result of his heightened battle reflexes, and his dyslexia is because his brain that is wired to read ancient Greek rather than English. Riordan spent several years trying to publish The Lighting Thief and was rejected multiple times. However, Miramax Books finally bought the manuscript in 2004 for enough money that Riordan was able to quit his teaching job to focus on writing full-time. The Percy Jackson & the Olympians series became an instant success after its publication and has been translated into 42 languages and has sold more than thirty million copies in the United States alone.
