Brandon Sanderson
Brandon Sanderson (born December 19, 1975) is an American fantasy author. A Nebraska native, he currently resides in Provo, Utah. He earned his Master's degree in Creative Writing in 2005 from Brigham Young University, where he was on the staff of Leading Edge a semi-professional speculative fiction magazine published by the university. He was a college roommate of Jeopardy! champion Ken Jennings. He has been nominated twice for the John W. Campbell Award.
Sanderson married on July 7, 2006 and is a member of the LDS church.
After Robert Jordan's death, Brandon Sanderson was selected by Harriet McDougal (Robert Jordan's widow), to complete the final book in Jordan's epic fantasy series The Wheel of Time. Harriet asked him to complete the series after being deeply impressed by Mistborn: The Final Empire. Tor Books made the announcement December 7, 2007. On March 30, 2009 it was announced that A Memory of Light, originally slated to be the final book in the Wheel of Time series, will be split into three volumes.
Lynsay Sands
Lynsay Sands (born Leamington, Ontario) is an award winning Canadian author of over 30 books. She is noted for the humor she injects into her stories. While she writes both historical and paranormal novels, she is best known for her Argeneau series about a modern family of vampires.
Sands grew up in Southern Ontario. Before college, Sands sent in a manuscript to Harlequin Enterprises, but got a response asking for a rewrite and anything else she had written; taking this as a rejection, Sands went on to study at the University of Windsor full time while working full time. Sands published her first novel, The Deed, in 1997.
Sands has written for three publishing houses: HarperCollin, Dorchester, and Kensington. Her novels have made the Waldens Books, Barnes & Noble, USA Today and The New York Times Bestsellers lists.
Andrzej Sapkowski
Andrzej Sapkowski, born 21 June 1948 in Lodz, is a Polish fantasy writer. Sapkowski studied economics, and before turning to writing, he had worked as a senior sales representative for a foreign trade company. His first short story, The Witcher (Wiedzmin), was published in Fantastyka, Poland's leading fantasy literary magazine, in 1986 and was enormously successful both with readers and critics. Sapkowski has created a cycle of tales based on the world of The Witcher, comprising three collections of short stories and five novels. This cycle and his many other works have made him one of the best-known fantasy authors in Poland in the 1990s.
In 1997, Sapkowski won the prestigious Polityka's Passport award, which is awarded annually to artists who have strong prospects for international success.
In 2001, a Television Series based on the Witcher cycle was released in Poland and internationally, entitled Wiedzmin (The Hexer). A film by the same title was compiled from excerpts of the television series but both have been critical and box office failures.
Sapkowski's books have been translated into Czech, Russian, Lithuanian, German, Spanish, French, Ukrainian, Portuguese, and others. An English translation of The Last Wish short story collection was published by Gollancz in 2007. From 2009 the Witcher saga is published by Gollancz.
The Polish game publisher, CD Projekt, created a role-playing PC game based on this universe, called The Witcher, which was released in October 2007. There is also a mobile version of the game which has been created by Breakpoint Games and is being published by Hands-On Mobile in Western Europe,Latin America and Asia Pacific.
The English translation of Sapkowski's novel Blood of Elves won the David Gemmell Legends Award in 2009.
John Scalzi
Scalzi was born in California and spent his childhood there, primarily in the Los Angeles suburbs of Covina, Glendora and Claremont. Scalzi went to high school with noted blogger Josh Marshall; both were members of the class of 1987. After his stint at The Webb Schools of California, Scalzi attended The University of Chicago, where he was a classmate of Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright David Auburn. Scalzi's thesis advisor, for a brief time, was Saul Bellow. Scalzi abandoned his course of study with Bellow when he became Student Ombudsman for the University. During his 1989–1990 school year Scalzi was also the editor-in-chief of The Chicago Maroon.
After graduating in 1991, Scalzi took a job as the film critic for the Fresno Bee newspaper, eventually also becoming a humor columnist. In 1996 he was hired as the in-house writer and editor at America Online and moved to Sterling, Virginia, with his wife, Kristine Ann Blauser, whom he had married in 1995. He was laid off in 1998, and since then he has been a full-time freelance writer and author. In 2001 Scalzi, his wife, and their daughter, Athena Marie, who was born in 1998, moved to Bradford, Ohio, to be closer to family.
On 15 March 2007, Scalzi announced himself as a write-in candidate for president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, citing disagreement with the only ballot-listed candidate's vision for the future of the organization. He was not elected.
