Philip Athans was born in Rochester, New York, in 1964 but grew up in suburban Chicago, where he fed his imagination a steady diet of Starlog magazines, Marvel comic books, reruns of Star Trek, and the very real triumphs of the Space Race. He began writing “books” in second grade and eventually traded in his crayons for a typewriter, then traded in the typewriter for a computer, and has since traded in entirely too many computers for newer, smarter, more expensive computers.
After graduating from film school in 1985 he published a small circulation literary magazine called Alternative Fiction & Poetry while working in a series of record stores to pay the bills and get free CDs. In 1995 J. Robert King resigned from his full time position as editor in the book publishing department of TSR in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, leaving the job open for Phil. Thanks, Rob.
When that job moved west to Seattle in 1997, Phil moved with it and eventually became Managing Editor for Wizards of the Coast Book Publishing, where he’s spent most of his time as the Forgotten Realms novel line editor. He’s edited over seventy novels for TSR and Wizards of the Coast, and helped launch the Greyhawk®, Dark Matter®, Star*Drive®, and Dungeons & Dragons® novel lines while making time to write books, the occasional short story, and even a screenplay or two.
Wizards of the Coast novels and short stories by Philip Athans:
Wizards of the Coast anthologies edited by Philip Athans:
