In March of 2011, my senior year in high school, my friend loaned me a book with a bird on the cover. "You have to read this," she told me. She was right.
Days later, after I had cried, wept, and sobbed my way through three beautiful books, I knew I had just read something timeless. Something important.
Six months after that, I taped a poster of that same bird onto the wall of my freshman dorm room. Every morning, I woke up to the now famous words:
May The Odds Be Ever In Your Favor.
It was this poster that caught the eye of the person who is now one of my very best friends. She walked by, saw that bird engulfed in flames, and the rest was history. Our mutual adoration for this story started a friendship that would bring us together every year in theater 8 of the Hudson 12, crying for Katniss, Gale, Finnick, and Peeta.


The Hunger Games has been a Young Adult powerhouse trilogy since it first arrived on shelves back in 2008. Katniss Everdeen and her friends captivated readers and inspired a whirlwind of dystopian themes and ideas. I can talk for days about why this story is successful and why its characters will withstand the test of time, but this trilogy is far too close to my heart to just break it down into facts and statistics. So, this is what The Hunger Games means to me as I go through life with my Mockingjay proudly pinned to my jacket. This is why it has and always will inspire me to write and live daringly.

I think any writer's goal is to write a story that stays with readers long after the last page. There are so many books that sit on our shelves and so many stories that pass through our reading list, but there are those that we always go back to. No matter how many times I read these three books, they still get to me. I still cry every time Katniss sings to Rue as she dies. I still get a mountainous anxiety as she's sent into the arena, and I still feel my heart break for Finnick, Prim, and the rest of those who didn't make it to the end. There's such an authentic state of danger that hovers over these characters, and Suzanne Collins has no problem addressing and displaying the true brutality of revolutionary warfare.




The trilogy is propelled by the heroes it revolves around, and Katniss Everdeen is a narrator that is truly worth following through over 300,000 words and 9 hours of screen time. In the beginning, she's just a girl trying to keep her little world in District 12 in tact. She wasn't born with any hidden greatness or destiny. Katniss fell into the role of a hero simply because she was brave. And then there's Gale Hawthorne, who will always be one of my favorite YA characters of all time. Gale is a strong, honorable person who dedicates his young life to providing for those around him. He has a rebellious heart, which gets away from him when presented with an actual war, but he fights injustice with every breath. Peeta Mellark, on the other hand, is much more gentle in his approach to life, but is just as courageous in his actions and words. The complicated relationships between these characters show that there are different kinds of love, and how dramatically war can change everything.


To say that The Hunger Games inspires me as a writer doesn't mean that I'm looking to kick out the next blockbuster franchise. It doesn't mean I'm off to try to replicate the dystopian formula in order to draw in readers. I mean that I want to write with courage. I want to tell a story that is real and honest, while also connecting with readers on a deep, personal level. I want to create something memorable and applicable to today's society, lead by characters worth loving and fighting for. One of the most important parts of The Hunger Games is that its themes of recognizing and fighting injustice are all too familiar to the world we live in today. It shows how one person can make a massive impact on a nation, and how important it is to retain your humanity along the way. Victory doesn't always lead to triumph. Remaking a world walks hand in hand with loss and sorrow, but hope remains when the smoke has cleared.

I grew up with this franchise. It saw me through two colleges, three cities, three jobs, six majors, and one life long friendship that started with the girl on fire. I have shed countless tears, spent dozens of hours waiting in movie theater lines, and spent way too much money on merchandise, but I am so happy this story and all that it brought with it came into my life. It taught me about taking risks as a writer and standing firm in who you are as a person. The Hunger Games will always be a staple in literature and cinema, and it's impact on the world and on my life will carry on long after the Mockingjay Part 2 credits roll for the last time. The fire truly will burn forever.