Philip Athans

Philip Athans was born in 1964 in Rochester, New York, and grew up in a suburb of Chicago, where he spent his time watching reruns of Star Trek and reading Marvel comics and issues of Starlog. He began his "writing" career before he turned ten, quickly moving from handwritten manuscripts to a typewriter and eventually to his computer. In 1985, after graduating from film school, he launched "Alternative Fiction & Poetry," a small-circulation literary magazine. In 1995, he took on the role of editor in the publishing department of TSR. In 1997, the company's offices moved to Seattle, and Phil followed, becoming the managing editor of the publishing department at Wizards of the Coast, where he primarily focused on editing novels set in the "Forgotten Realms" universe.