George R.R. Martin is an American writer, best known for A Song of Ice and Fire, his international bestselling series of epic fantasy novels that the HBO channel adapted for its dramatic series Game of Thrones. Lev Grossman called George R.R. Martin ‘the American Tolkien’ (Times 2005), other reviewers did not lavish enough praise on the author as well.
He was born on September 20th 1948 in Bayonne, New Jersey. He started his carrier relatively early writing monster stories and selling them... to his peers. Being a huge fan of the Marvel Comics he has written several letters to the editor of the Fantastic Four, comprising his literary attempts at creating alternative stories to the popular series. Some of them were so good that they were published in the comic books!
Martin is not only an excellent writer. In 1970 he earned B.A. in Journalism from Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois graduating summa cum laude. From 1976 to 1978 Martin was an English and journalism instructor at Clarke College, becoming Writer In Residence at the college between 1978 and 1979.
However, his best known fantasy series is A Song of Ice and Fire, he has also written Tales of Dunk and Egg – three-volume long series about events taking place in Westeros, 100 years before the events of A Song of Ice and Fire.
by Michał Kasperowicz
