Richard Russell Riordan Jr. (/ˈraɪərdən/ RY-ər-dən; born June 5, 1964)[2] 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.[3] 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 (2005), 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.[4][5] Riordan also helped Scholastic Press develop The 39 Clues series and its spinoffs, and penned its first book, The Maze of Bones.[6] 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.[7]
