Brandon Sanderson

Brandon Winn Sanderson, born December 19, 1975, in Lincoln, Nebraska, is an American author of high fantasy, science fiction, and young adult books. The eldest of four children born to Barbara and Winn Sanderson, he grew up as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. As a child, he was a reluctant reader, but in his teens a teacher gave him Barbara Hambly’s Dragonsbane, and fantasy became a passion. He soon began making early attempts at writing his own stories.

Sanderson is best known for the Mistborn series and The Stormlight Archive, both set in the Cosmere, his fictional universe. He has also written young adult and juvenile series outside the Cosmere, including The Reckoners, the Skyward series, and the Alcatraz series. His graphic novels include White Sand and Dark One. To a wide fantasy readership, he is also known for completing Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time after Jordan’s death, a task he was chosen for in 2007 by Harriet McDougal, Jordan’s wife and editor.

His education and early work habits helped form the way he wrote. After graduating from high school in 1994, Sanderson attended Brigham Young University, first majoring in biochemistry. From 1995 to 1997, he served as a volunteer LDS missionary in South Korea; he later said his experience with Korean language and linguistics helped him build the magic system for Elantris, his first published novel. Returning to BYU, he changed his major to English literature. He worked as a night auditor at a hotel in Provo, Utah, a job that allowed him to write while working. He earned a B.A. in 2000 and an M.A. in English with an emphasis in creative writing in 2004.

By 2003, Sanderson had written twelve novels, though none had yet been accepted for publication. Tor Books published Elantris on April 21, 2005, followed in 2006 by Mistborn: The Final Empire. The next books in that trilogy, The Well of Ascension and The Hero of Ages, appeared in 2007 and 2008. In 2009, his first Wheel of Time volume, The Gathering Storm, reached number one on the New York Times bestseller list for hardcover fiction; Towers of Midnight followed in 2010, and A Memory of Light completed the series in 2013. In 2010, he launched The Stormlight Archive with The Way of Kings.

Sanderson has also helped shape how readers and writers talk about fantasy craft. In 2008, he began the podcast Writing Excuses with Dan Wells and Howard Tayler, and in 2022 he and Wells started Intentionally Blank, focused on writing and pop culture. His Sanderson’s Laws of Magic popularized the idea of “hard magic” and “soft magic” systems. As of 2023, he had written 71 books, several of them New York Times best sellers. His 2022 Kickstarter to self-publish four novels became the most successful in history, with 185,341 backers pledging US$41,754,153. In January 2026, Apple TV purchased film and television rights to the Cosmere in an unprecedented deal giving Sanderson extensive creative control. Readers keep returning to his work for its clear structure, vast invention, and the feeling that every rule in a story can open a new door.