Stephen Reeder Donaldson
Stephen R. Donaldson on a 2007 book tour.
Born	(1947-05-13) May 13, 1947 (age 77) Cleveland, Ohio
Pen name	Reed Stephens
Occupation	Novelist
Nationality	American
Genre	Fantasy, science fiction, mystery

Stephen Reeder Donaldson (born May 13, 1947) is an American fantasy, science fiction and mystery novelist, most famous for The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, his ten-novel fantasy series. His work is characterized by psychological complexity, conceptual abstractness, moral bleakness, and the use of an arcane vocabulary, and has attracted critical praise for its "imagination, vivid characterizations, and fast pace".^[1] He earned his bachelor's degree from The College of Wooster and a Master's degree from Kent State University. He currently resides in New Mexico.

In the United Kingdom he is usually called "Stephen Donaldson" (without the "R").

Donaldson spent part of his youth in India, where he attended what is now the Kodaikanal International School. He was attending Kent State University as a graduate student at the time of the Kent State shootings on May 4, 1970. Though he was not on campus at the time of the shootings, his apartment was one and a half blocks away, and he was forced to live under martial law for three days afterwards. Donaldson does not like to discuss the incident, as he finds the memories disturbing.^[2]

Donaldson is a fan of opera, and has said that he "love[s] that direct expression of passionate emotion in beautiful sound".^[3] In 1994, he gained a black belt in Shotokan karate.^[4]

Donaldson is part of the generation of fantasy authors which came to prominence in the 1970s and early 1980s. Like that of many of his peers, his writing is heavily influenced by the works of J. R. R. Tolkien. However, Donaldson's stories show a wide range of other influences, including Mervyn Peake, C. S. Lewis, Robert E. Howard, and the operas of Richard Wagner. Donaldson is also a great fan of Roger Zelazny's Amber novels, which were a direct inspiration for his own Mordant's Need series. Also, in the Gradual Interview section of his website, Donaldson mentions his extensive study of Joseph Conrad, Henry James and William Faulkner to further develop his narrative style.

1. Lord Foul's Bane (1977)
2. The Illearth War (1978)
3. The Power That Preserves (1979)

1. The Wounded Land (1980)
2. The One Tree (1982)
3. White Gold Wielder (1983)

1. The Runes of the Earth (2004)
2. Fatal Revenant (2007)
3. Against All Things Ending (2010)
4. The Last Dark (2013)

1. The Gap into Conflict: The Real Story (1991)
2. The Gap into Vision: Forbidden Knowledge (1991)
3. The Gap into Power: A Dark and Hungry God Arises (1993)
4. The Gap into Madness: Chaos and Order (1994)
5. The Gap into Ruin: This Day All Gods Die (1996)

Awards referenced from ^[5]

• 2009: Honorary Doctor of Letters, University of St Andrews^[6]

• Clute, J; et al. (1999). The Encyclopedia of Fantasy. St. Martin's. p. 282. ISBN 1-85723-893-1.
• Hendrix, L.L. (1995). "The world of glass: The heroine's quest for identity in Spenser's Faerie Queen and Stephen R. Donaldson's Mirror of Her Dreams". Contributions to the Study of Science Fiction and Fantasy. 65: 91–100.
• Keller, Dean H.; Nicholson, John W.; Dubois, Paul Z. (1986). Reading and the art of librarianship: selected essays of John B. Nicholson, Jr. New York: Haworth Press. p. 181. ISBN 0-86656-585-X.
• Laskar, B (2004). "Suicide and the absurd: The influence of Jean-Paul Sartre's and Albert Camus's existentialism on Stephen R. Donaldson's The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant The Unbeliever". Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts. 14: 409.
• Senior, W. A. (1995). Stephen R. Donaldson's Chronicles of Thomas Covenant: variations on the fantasy of tradition. [Kent, Ohio]: Kent State University Press. ISBN 0-87338-528-4.
• Ward, T.B. (2001). "Creative Cognition, Conceptual Combination, and the Creative Writing of Stephen R. Donaldson". American Psychologist. 56 (4): 350–54. doi:10.1037/0003-066X.56.4.350. PMID 11330235. Retrieved 2008-02-22.

Wikiquote has quotations related to Stephen R. Donaldson.

• Official website
• Kevin's Watch
• Stephen Donaldson Home Page at Kent State University
• Stephen R. Donaldson at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• Stephen R. Donaldson at Fantasy Literature.net

• The Gradual Interview, an archive of 2,690 questions posed by fans and answered by Donaldson. Ran from February 2004 to August 2011.
• Interview on wotmania.com

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