Robin Hobb

Margaret Astrid Lindholm Ogden (born March 5, 1952), better known by her pen names Robin Hobb and Megan Lindholm, is an American writer. She has written five series set in the Realm of the Elderlings, which started in 1995 with the publication of Assassin's Apprentice and ended with Assassin's Fate in 2017. Her books have sold over a million copies.

Margaret Astrid Lindholm was born in Berkeley, California, in 1952, but from the age of ten, she grew up in Fairbanks, Alaska. After graduating from Austin E. Lathrop High School, she studied at University of Denver for a year and then returned to Alaska. At eighteen, she married Fred Ogden and they returned to his home town of Kodiak, located at the tip of Kodiak Island in south-central Alaska.
Writing as Megan Lindholm
Hobb at the Trolls & Legends festival in Mons, Belgium in April 2011

Lindholm sold her first short story to a children's magazine, leading to an early career writing for children. Her short fiction for children appeared in magazines such as Humpty Dumpty, Jack and Jill, and Highlights for Children. She also composed educational material, short works of fiction created to a very specific vocabulary list, which were used in SRA's programmed reading material.

In the 1970s, Lindholm also began to write short fantasy, publishing short stories in fanzines such as Space and Time (edited by Gordon Linzner). Her first professional sale as a fantasy writer was the short story "Bones for Dulath", which appeared in the 1979 Amazons! anthology, and which introduced her recurring characters Ki and Vandien. The anthology, published by DAW Books, won a World Fantasy Award for Year's Best Anthology. A second story featuring Ki and Vandien, "The Small One," was published in Fantastic Stories in 1980.