Ian Cameron Esslemont is a Canadian author born on 26 February 1962 in Winnipeg, Manitoba. A longtime friend and collaborator of Steven Erikson, Esslemont co-created the Malazan world during the same role-playing sessions of the 1980s that gave rise to the main sequence. He studied creative writing at the University of Victoria, where he met Erikson, and later lived and worked in Asia before returning to write full time. Esslemont's novels expand the Malazan world beyond the territory covered by Erikson's main sequence, focusing on regions and characters that appear only peripherally in the core books. His Novels of the Malazan Empire - beginning with Night of Knives in 2004 - run parallel to and between the events of the main sequence. His later Path to Ascendancy trilogy covers the early history of the empire, tracing the rise of the figures who define the world of the main sequence.