Tui Tamara Sutherland (born July 31, 1978 in Caracas, Venezuela) is an American children's book author who has written more than 50 books under her own name and under several pen names. In 2009, she appeared as a contestant on Jeopardy!, becoming a two-day champion and winning a grand total of $46,200. Sutherland's books have sold over 15 million copies; she is perhaps best known for writing the Wings of Fire series of dragon fantasy novels. Early life, education and literary career Tui T. Sutherland was born on July 31, 1978 in Caracas. Her mother, who was from New Zealand, named her after the tui, a bird native to that country. Sutherland lived in Asuncion, Miami, and Santo Domingo for short periods before moving to New Jersey in high school. While in high school she began doing theater, mostly backstage work. She obtained a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature from Williams College in 1998, writing her college thesis about Ophelia from William Shakespeare's Hamlet, then earned a Master of Arts in Art History. Sutherland abandoned ideas of a career in theater in favor of writing children's books after "she partook in creative writing courses over six months in New Zealand", a decision she half-joked allowed her career path "to be more far stable and lucrative". Sutherland began her professional literary career as an editor in Brooklyn, New York, at Grosset & Dunlap, then at HarperCollins; she rose to initial notoriety after becoming a member of the Erin Hunter team alongside Victoria Holmes, Kate Cary and Cherith Baldry on the popular Warriors and Seekers series, from the perspective of cats and bears respectively. Her initial success during this time, coupled with what she learned about the inside workings of the publishing industry, helped her build the courage to publish books of her own and to eventually quit her position as an editor to write full-time. She later moved to Watertown. Her first solo work, This Must Be Love (a retelling of A Midsummer Night's Dream), was published in 2004. Sutherland wrote books under her actual name (or an initialized variation) and under pseudonyms and pen names, including Tamara Summers, Heather Williams, and Rob Kidd. After releasing the eighth and final installment in her dog-oriented Pet Trouble series, Sutherland pitched the editing team at Scholastic Inc. about writing an epic fantasy series starring dragons as the heroes. With Amanda Maciel as