Background and career
Brandon Winn Sanderson (born December 19, 1975) is an American author of high fantasy, science fiction, and young adult books. His best known novels include the Mistborn series and The Stormlight Archive, which are set in the "Cosmere", a fictional universe. 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 completing author Robert Jordan's high fantasy series The Wheel of Time. Sanderson has created two graphic novels, White Sand and Dark One. He is credited with coining Sanderson's Laws of Magic, which popularized the idea of "hard" and "soft" magic systems. In 2008, Sanderson started a creative writing podcast with the horror writer Dan Wells and the cartoonist Howard Tayler called Writing Excuses. In mid-2022, Sanderson and Wells started another podcast, Intentionally Blank, which is focused on writing and pop culture. Sanderson's writing has received numerous nominations and awards. He has been noted for his prolific level of writing output, having written 71 books as of 2023, several of which have topped The New York Times best seller list. Sanderson's March 2022 Kickstarter campaign to self-publish four novels became one of the most successful in history, finishing with 185,341 backers pledging US$41,754,153. In January 2026, Apple TV purchased the film and television rights to Sanderson's Cosmere universe, in a deal which gives Sanderson extensive creative control over the content.
Sanderson was born on December 19, 1975, in Lincoln, Nebraska, the eldest of four children born to Barbara and Winn Sanderson. Sanderson was raised as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS church). As a child he was a "reluctant reader" but became a passionate reader of fantasy in his teens after a teacher gave him a copy of Dragonsbane by Barbara Hambly. He made several early attempts at writing his own stories.
After graduating from high school in 1994, Sanderson went to Brigham Young University (BYU) and majored in biochemistry. He took a two-year leave of absence from 1995 to 1997 to serve as a volunteer LDS missionary and was assigned to serve in South Korea. According to Sanderson, his experience with Korean language and linguistics helped him build the magic system for Elantris, his first published novel. In 1997, 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, which allowed him to write while working. One of Sanderson's roommates at BYU was Ken Jennings (famous for his appearance on the show Jeopardy! and as the host since 2021). He graduated in 2000 with a Bachelor of Arts. He continued on as a graduate student, receiving an M.A. in English with an emphasis in creative writing in 2004. Sanderson's honors thesis, Dragonsteel, was the first in BYU's history to be rebound as it was being read so frequently by students at the university library. 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 during 2001.
In 2006, Sanderson married Emily Bushman in the Mount Timpanogos Utah LDS Temple. Emily was an English, Spanish, and ESL teacher, and is a fellow BYU alumna. She later became the business manager for Dragonsteel Entertainment, Sanderson's company. They have three sons and reside in American Fork, Utah. As of 2022, Sanderson was serving as a Sunday School teacher in his LDS ward.
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. Elantris was published by Tor Books on April 21, 2005, to generally positive reviews. 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" was first published in 2007, with the second and third published in 2012 and 2013 (respectively). 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. In 2009, Tor Books published Warbreaker, which originally appeared serially on Sanderson's website while he was writing the novel from 2006 to 2009. In the same year, the third Alcatraz book was published, titled Alcatraz Versus the Knights of Crystallia.
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. 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. 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.
