James Dashner
James Dashner is an author of young-adult fiction, including the #1 New York Times best-selling series The Maze Runner. He is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, sometimes inadvertently called the Mormon Church.
Dashner was born and raised in Austell, Georgia. He attended Brigham Young University where he earned a master’s degree in accounting. He worked as an accountant until he was able to devote full time to writing.
He is the author of Maze Runner, which was published in 2009. Maze Runner is the first in a young-adult adventure series about Thomas, a teen who awakens amid other teens in a dystopian society called the Glade. The Maze Runner film was released by Twentieth-Century Fox in September 2014, with one of the most successful debuts of all time with over $32 million grossed in the United States and $49 million internationally. The Maze Runner series (which includes titles The Scorch Trials and The Death Cure) has been on the New York Times Bestseller List for more than one year. He published a prequel The Kill Order in August 2012. The series has been printed in more than 40 languages. Due to the success of The Maze Runner movie, a sequel film, The Scorch Trials, premiered in September 2015. Although it received mixed reviews, it took the #1 spot at the box office its opening weekend and grossed $312 million worldwide. The third film in the series, Maze Runner: The Death Cure, released in January 2018 and grossed over $288 million worldwide.
Dashner has written four other series—Jimmy Fincher Saga, The 13th Reality, The Infinity Ring, The Mortality Doctrine—all for teens. He is the recipient of numerous awards for his books. His first book {The Eye of Minds) in his latest series, The Mortality Doctrine, was published in October 2013, and the second title, Rule of Thoughts was published in August 2014. The series is set in a world of extremely advanced technology, cyber terrorism, artificial intelligence, and gaming.
He lives in the Rocky Mountains with his wife and four children.
