Brandon Sanderson

Brandon Winn Sanderson (born December 19, 1975) is an American author of high fantasy and science fiction.

He is best known for the Cosmere fictional universe, in which most of his fantasy novels, most notably the Mistborn series and The Stormlight Archive, are set.

Outside of the Cosmere, he has written several young adult and juvenile series including The Reckoners, the Skyward series, and the Alcatraz series.

He is also known for finishing Robert Jordan's high fantasy series The Wheel of Time. Sanderson has created several graphic novel fantasy series, including White Sand and Dark One.

He created Sanderson's Laws of Magic and popularized the idea of "hard magic" and "soft magic" systems.

Brandon Winn Sanderson was born on December 19, 1975, in Lincoln, Nebraska, the eldest of four children.

Sanderson was a "reluctant reader" as a child, but became passionate for the medium after being given a copy of Dragonsbane by Barbara Hambly when he was 14.

He made several early attempts at writing his own stories.

After graduating from high school in 1994, he went to Brigham Young University (BYU) as a biochemistry major.

He took a two-year leave of absence from 1995 to 1997 to serve as a volunteer missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and was assigned to serve in South Korea.

After completing his missionary service, Sanderson returned to BYU and changed his major to English literature.

While an undergraduate, Sanderson took a job as a night auditor at a local hotel in Provo, Utah, as it allowed him to write while working.

One of Sanderson's roommates at BYU was Ken Jennings, who nearly ten years later became famous during his 74-game win streak on the American game show Jeopardy!.

Sanderson graduated from BYU in 2000 with a Bachelor of Arts.

Sanderson wrote consistently throughout his undergraduate and graduate studies; by 2003, he had written twelve novels, though no publisher had accepted any of them for publication.

While in the middle of a graduate program at BYU, he was contacted by Tor Books editor Moshe Feder, who wanted to acquire one of his books.

Sanderson had submitted the manuscript of his sixth novel, Elantris, a year and a half earlier.

He continued on as a graduate student, receiving an M.A. in English with an emphasis in creative writing in 2004.

While at BYU, Sanderson was on the staff of Leading Edge, a semi-professional speculative fiction magazine published by the university, and served as its editor-in-chief for one year.

Elantris was published by Tor Books on April 21, 2005, to generally positive reviews.

In 2006, Sanderson married Emily Bushman, an English, Spanish, and ESL teacher and fellow BYU alumna who later became his business manager.

They have three sons and reside in American Fork, Utah.

This was followed in 2006 by Mistborn: The Final Empire, the first book in his Mistborn fantasy trilogy, in which "allomancers"—people with the ability to 'burn' metals and alloys after ingesting them—gain enhanced senses and control over powerful supernatural forces.

He published the second book of the Mistborn series The Well of Ascension in 2007.

Later that year, Sanderson published the children's novel Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians, about a boy named Alcatraz with a talent for breaking things.

Alcatraz confronts a group of evil librarians who are bent on taking over the world.

The first of his "laws of magic" were first published in 2007, with the second and third published in 2012 and 2013 (respectively).

Sanderson rose to prominence in late 2007 when Harriet McDougal, the wife and editor of author Robert Jordan, chose Sanderson to complete the final books in Jordan's epic fantasy series The Wheel of Time after Jordan's death.

McDougal asked Sanderson to finish the series after being deeply impressed by his first Mistborn novel, The Final Empire.

Tor Books made the announcement on December 7, 2007.

In 2008, Sanderson started a podcast with author Dan Wells and cartoonist Howard Tayler called Writing Excuses, involving topics about creating genre writing and webcomics.

In 2008, the third and final book in the Mistborn trilogy was published, titled The Hero of Ages, as well as the second book in the Alcatraz series, titled Alcatraz Versus the Scrivener's Bones.

That same year, he started the podcast Writing Excuses with Howard Tayler and Dan Wells.

After reviewing what was necessary to complete the series, Sanderson and Tor announced on March 30, 2009, that a final three books would be published instead of just one.

The first of these, The Gathering Storm, was published on October 27, 2009, and reached the number-one spot on the New York Times bestseller list for hardcover fiction.

In 2009, Tor Books published Warbreaker, which originally appeared serially on Sanderson's website while he was writing the novel from 2006 to 2009.

Towers of Midnight, the second-to-last The Wheel of Time book, was published just over a year after The Gathering Storm on November 2, 2010, debuting at number one on the bestseller list.

In early 2013, the series was completed with the publication of A Memory of Light.

In 2016, the American media company DMG Entertainment licensed the movie rights to Sanderson's entire Cosmere universe, but the rights have since reverted back to Sanderson.

Sanderson's March 2022 Kickstarter campaign became the most successful in history, finishing with 185,341 backers pledging $41,754,153.