Brandon Sanderson

Brandon Sanderson was born on December 19, 1975, in Lincoln, Nebraska, the oldest of four kids. In 1994 he enrolled at Brigham Young University (BYU) in Utah to study biochemistry. From 1995 to 1997 he served a religious mission in South Korea, and he says exposure to the Korean writing system helped him build the magic of Elantris. When he came back he swapped chemistry for English: a bachelor's in 2000 and a master's with a creative writing emphasis in 2004.

The waiting years became part of the legend. As an undergrad he worked as a night auditor at a hotel in Provo, a quiet shift that left time to write. By 2003 he had finished twelve novels, and none had sold. While he was still in grad school, Tor Books editor Moshe Feder got in touch, and Elantris came out in April 2005.

The breakout came in 2006 with Mistborn: The Final Empire. The premise: in a world where ash falls from the sky and an immortal emperor has ruled for a thousand years, a street thief learns she can burn metals inside her body for power and joins a plan to bring the Empire down. The trilogy wrapped in 2008 with The Hero of Ages. The series then jumped centuries ahead to a second era with a Western, railroad feel, from The Alloy of Law (2011) to The Lost Metal (2022).

In 2007, Harriet McDougal chose Sanderson to finish Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time after Jordan died before completing it. The material became three books, published in 2009, 2010 and 2013, and put his name in front of millions of fantasy readers.

In 2010 he began his most ambitious project: The Stormlight Archive, opened by The Way of Kings. On Roshar, a world battered by enormous storms, an enslaved former soldier, a scholar and a highprince cross paths as powers tied to ancient knightly orders return. Wind and Truth (2024) closed the first five-book arc; the next books are expected around 2031. Nearly all of this sits inside the Cosmere, the shared universe that links Elantris, Mistborn, Stormlight and other works.

Sanderson is known for magic with clear rules. Sanderson's Laws popularized the split between "hard" and "soft" magic: the better readers understand a system, the more it can solve problems; limitations are more interesting than powers. He teaches creative writing at BYU, co-hosted the Writing Excuses podcast from 2008 to 2022, and won the 2013 Hugo for Best Novella with The Emperor's Soul. He also writes for younger readers, with series like Alcatraz, The Reckoners and Skyward.

In March 2022, a Kickstarter for four secretly written novels raised $41.7 million from more than 185,000 backers, the largest campaign in the platform's history. His company, Dragonsteel, handles special editions and rights. In January 2026, Apple closed a deal for the Cosmere, with Mistborn films and a Stormlight series in development and Sanderson holding creative control. His sales top 50 million copies. He lives in American Fork, Utah, with his wife, Emily, and their three sons.