Ellen Hopkins  was March 26, 1955 in Long Beach, CA. She was adopted at birth by an older couple. Albert C. Wagner was 72 at the time; Valeria was 42. To put that into perspective, he was born in 1883 and she was born in 1912. Ellen grew up in Palm Springs, CA, in a neighborhood with movie stars and entertainment icons, including Elvis Presley, Bob Hope, Kirk Douglas and Arnold Palmer. She considered her famuliy, the “poor rich." Ellen's father made his money in the steel industry in WWII. She remembers the day he had actually earned his million. As a poor immigrant child who was most definitely a self-made man with a 6th grade education, he couldn’t have been prouder. From her father, Ellen learned the value of hard work and honesty. From my mother, she learned a love of language and reading. Ellen's mother inhaled literature and read to her every day from the time she was a baby. In school Ellen was a straight A student almost all the way through school. With an excellent private school background through 8th grade, it was fairly easy for Ellen to maintain those grades all the way through high school, despite a certain renegade attitude (70s rebel and all that!). Ellen was the type who could read a chapter in a book and pass a test, even without the classroom discussion necessary for some. Ellen started writing from the time she knew how to put words on paper. Ellen's always been writing something (especially poetry) ever since, although she didn’t start writing for money until around 1992.