Terence Dean Brooks, born in 1944, is an American writer of fantasy fiction and one of the best-selling living authors in the genre. He trained and worked as a lawyer before his writing career took off, and he has credited Tolkien and William Faulkner among his formative influences.
His first novel, The Sword of Shannara, published in 1977, became a landmark in publishing as one of the first works of epic fantasy to reach the top of mainstream bestseller lists, helping to establish fantasy as a commercially major genre.
Brooks built the long-running Shannara saga across many volumes spanning the history of his invented world, and he also created the contemporary fantasy Word and Void series, later linked to Shannara. Across his career he has written more than two dozen New York Times bestsellers, with tens of millions of copies in print.
He has also written popular film novelizations and a memoir on writing, Sometimes the Magic Works, and remains a beloved and influential figure for readers and writers of fantasy.
