“It’s not off the table, but it would be a dangerous thing to do,” Sanderson said during a FanX panel.
(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) Bestselling, Utah-based author Brandon Sanderson leads a spotlight panel at FanX on Saturday Sept. 27, 2025.
A devoted fanbase packed a Salt Lake City convention room for a world-famous, Utah-based author on Saturday afternoon.
Brandon Sanderson — a bestselling author who writes fantasy, sci-fi and young adult novels, including his famous “Mistborn” series — led an hour-and-a-half-long panel at FanX in which he answered fan questions, revealed new art and book editions and did a live reading.
One fan asked if Sanderson had thought of buying up Utah’s Evermore Park and bringing it back to life.
At last year’s convention, Sanderson announced that his corporation, Dragonsteel Entertainment, bought the land next to what used to be Evermore Park in Pleasant Grove, Utah, with the intent of eventually making a bookstore. The area, he said, would be called Dragonsteel Plaza.
“I get asked this a lot,” Sanderson said at this year’s panel. “I’ve thought about it seriously. I really have. It’s expensive, and I worry about … if we jump into something too soon, it’s very easy for companies like mine, that are doing very well, to spend all of their … cash and then stop doing very well.”
(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) Janae Heninger gets a chance to ask a question of bestselling, Utah-based author Brandon Sanderson during a spotlight panel at FanX on Saturday Sept. 27, 2025. On her shoulder is the rat Huck, one of the characters from his book Tress of the Emerald Sea.
Evermore Park was previously a fantasy- and medieval-themed park located in Pleasant Grove. It closed in April 2024 and was purchased by a St. George couple, but in January, it was revealed that there were issues with the sale.
“It’s not off the table, but it would be a dangerous thing to do, and so I would want to be very careful with it,” Sanderson said. He also said he would most likely not bring Evermore back, because he’s not sure if the model would “work very well.”
During the Q&A, fans stood in a line that wrapped around the ballroom for a chance to ask Sanderson a question. They delighted in the shared language of the worlds Sanderson has created that so many of them love.
Many asked about Sanderson’s books, the worldbuilding in them and about his inspiration behind certain scenes. He mentioned how a trip to Southern Utah’s Slot Canyons with a college roommate inspired the worldbuilding in some of his books. He also discussed how he wanted to explore the theme of magic coming back in “The Stormlight Archives.”
When asked about how he approaches mental health representation in his books, Sanderson said, “I feel like I have a mandate to try to produce the world as it is and try to reproduce people as they are in my stories.”
