Kiera Cass
In 2007, her world was shaken by a local tragedy. Over the course of the following year, she got into the habit of writing, including The Selection and handful of other titles. She self-published The Siren in 2009.
In early 2010 she started querying The Selection and was lucky enough to find an agent in Elana Roth. After a few months, Erica Sussman at HarperTeen snapped up The Selection, and it came out in the spring of 2012. She is now a New York Times bestselling author.
Kiera currently lives in Blacksburg, VA with her husband and two children. When she's not busy writing, Kiera spends her free time playing on YouTube and twitter and eating cake.
Author's Comment: The Selection was born out of wondering about the “what ifs” of other stories, mainly Esther (from the Bible) and Cinderella. I just wondered if Esther, before she was shipped off to the palace to compete for this king, maybe liked the boy next door. Even if she lost, she was never coming home. Did she maybe care about someone else and have to let that love die? I was just curious about her heart. And Cinderella never asked for a prince. She asked for a night off and a dress. We assume that she lived happily ever after because she got a man, but what if that wasn’t the case? What if this was way more than she was prepared to deal with?
Those two thoughts merged in my head, and I knew I wanted to write a story about a girl who would come from a humble background and would gain the attention of a prince, but she wouldn’t want him because she was already in love. And I knew that she would go through something (which ends up being the Selection) that shows her more of the world than she was ever prepared to see.
Nationality: American