David Farland

David (Wolverton) Farland was born in 1957. As a child he would write up short stories and had a dream of becoming a fantasy writer. As he grew older he started a number of career paths, but never forgot about his dream of becoming a writer. Once he had saved up enough money, he decided to go to Brigham Young University (BYU) to study English.

While at BYU he entered the L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future Contest and won the Gold Award. Immediately after, he was contracted by Bantam Books to turn his short story into a novel. He was also contracted to write two other books With Bantam. His novel, My Way to Paradise was on the Locus Science Fiction Best-seller list for many months, and it won a Phillip K. Dick Memorial Special Award for being one of the best science fiction novels of the year.

For ten years David wrote several science fiction books that were on many best sellers lists. David decided it was time for a change and started to write fantasy novels. With such a big change, David decided to pen a new name as well, David Farland. With hard work, his fantasy books started to hit the New York Times Best Seller’s list immediately.

David achieved his dream of becoming a writer and not only that, he became a best seller of two different genres. David also holds the Guinness Record for the world’s largest book signing with the novel A Very Strange Trip. He later became a judge for the world’s largest writing contests, the L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future Contest.

David later returned to BYU as a English professor. He felt it was slowing his writing down, so he started to give lectures, workshops, and seminars to future writers. He taught many great writes including Stephanie Meyer, Brandon Mull, James Dashner, as well as many others. David enjoys inspiring and mentoring “would be” writers, and writes an email bulletin called David Farland’s Daily Kick in the Pants.

David also worked in the gaming industry for the video game Starcraft: Blood War. He is also working as a movie producer and is working on a film for his Runelords Series. To date, David has written and edited fifty published books including novels for adults, young adults, anthologies, middle-grade readers, and picture books. Currently, David lives in St. George, Utah with his wife and five children.