Dave Wolverton

• 1. A Name on the Shelf

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  Dave Wolverton chose a second name partly because of where books were placed in bookstores. He was born John David Wolverton, and he published as both Dave Wolverton and David Farland. His reasoning was practical. A fantasy author needed a name that suited the genre, and his family name left his printed books on the lower shelves, away from eye level. That kind of thinking about readers, shelves and craft runs through his whole career. He was an American author and editor, and he was also a teacher of writers. What pulled him into a contest for new talent, and what kept him there for decades? Which well-known writers sat in his workshops? And what did a novelist have to do with a strategy video game and the film business?

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• 2. Farm and Faith

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  John David Wolverton was born on the 28th of May 1957 in Springfield, Oregon, to Jack and Lola Jean Wolverton. When he was six, the family moved to a farm in Monroe. He grew up there and graduated from Monroe High School. After graduation he served as a volunteer missionary in Illinois for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He then enrolled at Ricks College and later transferred to Brigham Young University. At Brigham Young he met a woman named Mary. They married in the Provo Utah Temple on the 22nd of June 1985, and they raised two daughters and three sons. Writing was the next thing on his mind, and it began while he was still in college.

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• 3. Contest Winner

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  The fall 1985 issue of The Leading Edge carried a short story called "The Sky Is an Open Highway." It was the start of Wolverton's writing career. After that he began entering short stories in contests. In 1987 he took first place in the Writers of the Future contest with a novella titled "On My Way to Paradise." He later expanded that novella into a novel with the same title. Bantam Spectra published it in 1989. The novel earned nominations for both the Locus Award and the Philip K. Dick Award. A Nebula Award nomination followed in 1990. He has also been nominated in the Best Novelette category of the Nebula Award for his short story "After a Lean Winter." The contest he won in 1987 would soon become part of his working life.

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• 4. Keeper of the Anthology

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  In 1991, four years after his own win, Wolverton became a judge for the Writers of the Future contest. The following year he co-edited volume 8 of the contest's annual anthology with Algis Budrys. From volume 9 through volume 14 he edited the anthology himself, and then he handed the job back to Budrys. A second stretch began when he took over editing from K. D. Wentworth. That run started with volume 29 and continued through volume 37. Over those decades he moved from prizewinner to one of the people shaping the contest's yearly book. At the time of his death he still held the titles of Coordinating Judge and Editor.

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• 5. The Classroom

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  From 1999 to 2002, Wolverton worked as an English professor of creative writing at Brigham Young University. He also ran writing workshops for beginners and for writers who were already established. Among the writers he taught were Brandon Mull, Jessica Day George, Eric Flint, Stephenie Meyer and James Dashner, along with many others. His BYU course itself passed to a famous heir. One of his former students, Brandon Sanderson, took over the creative writing class that Wolverton had taught.

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• 6. Books and Honors

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  The first Runelords book arrived in the mid-1990s, and with it came the name David Farland. Until then Wolverton had published under his own name. The Runelords books became international bestsellers, and they reached the New York Times bestseller list. He also wrote 24 stories for the Star Wars franchise and 3 for the Mummy franchise. In the summer of 1998 he set a world record for the largest single-author book signing. The book behind it was A Very Strange Trip, which he wrote from a story by L. Ron Hubbard. In 2009 his historical novel In the Company of Angels won the Whitney Award for best novel of the year, and it was also a finalist for best historical novel. The Whitneys gave him an outstanding achievement award that same year. In 2012 his young adult fantasy thriller Nightingale won the International Book Award for best Young Adult Novel of the Year. It also took the Grand Prize at the Hollywood Book Festival and the Southern California Book Festival's award for best young adult novel. It was a finalist in the Global Ebook Awards as well. Since 1998, meanwhile, a different side of his career had been unfolding in the games industry.

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• 7. Games and Screens

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  In 1998, Wolverton started part-time work at Saffire Studios, helping to create video games. His best-known contribution was the concept of the lurkers in Starcraft: Brood War, a real-time strategy game. Four years later, in 2002, he moved into film as a movie producer. He greenlit movies and screenplays in Hollywood. Among those film projects was an adaptation of his own Runelords series.

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• 8. The Last Day

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  On the 13th of January 2022, Wolverton fell and suffered a severe head injury and a hemorrhagic stroke. He was placed on life support. He died early the next morning, the 14th of January, at the age of 64. He and his wife were living in St. George, Utah, where he died. He was buried in the Tonaquint Cemetery in St. George. At the time he was working on three books. One was a rewrite of Nightingale, which dates to 2011. Another was a new Runelords installment titled A Tale of Tales. The third was S.W.A.R.M., which would have been the fourth book in his Ravenspell series.

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