Brandon Sanderson: Mormon Author
Brandon Sanderson is a fantasy author and member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, who in 2007 was selected to finish "The Wheel of Time" series. After the death of Robert Jordan, the original author of "The Wheel of Time" series, Jordan's widow chose Sanderson to finish off the series after reading his other work. In 2009, the novel "The Gathering Storm" reached No. 1 on the New York Times best-seller list, and "Towers of Midnight" did the same in 2010 — both books are part of Jordan's "Wheel of Time" series. [1]
Sanderson was born in Lincoln, Nebraska, in 1975 and moved to Provo, Utah, at 18 to go to school. Not having much interest in standard reading fare for youth, Sanderson discovered epic fantasy as a teenager and devoured such books by talented authors. Sanderson started at Brigham Young University in 1994 as a bio-chemistry major, where he later earned a bachelor's degree. He served a full-time LDS mission in Seoul, Korea, from 1995 to 1997. After his mission, he changed his major from chemistry to English. Later, he also earned a Master's degree in creative writing from BYU. During his school years, Sanderson took a job as a hotel clerk to pay for his education. The job allowed him to write when he wasn't busy, and he wrote seven novels during this period. He claims to have quite a collection of rejection slips from publishers.
- "It was in 2003, while Brandon was in the middle of a graduate program at BYU, that he got a call from an editor at Tor who wanted to buy one of Brandon's books. Brandon had submitted the manuscript a year and a half earlier, and had almost given up on hearing anything, so he was surprised and delighted to receive the offer. In May of 2005 Brandon held his first published novel, Elantris, in his hands. Tor also published Brandon's Mistborn trilogy, and has plans to release other Sanderson titles in the future." [2]
Sanderson teaches a class at BYU on fantasy writing. In 2006 he married Emily Bushman, who works part-time as his business manager.
- "Brandon's repertoire expanded into the children's market when Scholastic published Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians, a middle-grade novel, in October of 2007. Nancy Pearl gave this book a very favorable review on National Public Radio, which pleased Sanderson fans. Since the release of Alcatraz Brandon has enjoyed visiting schools and interacting with younger readers.
- "In December of 2007 Brandon was chosen by Harriet Rigney to complete A Memory of Light, book twelve in Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series. Brandon is now hard at work on this epic project."
