@ezo Many of the people whose names you don’t recognize have sold hundreds of thousands or millions of copies, routinely dominate New York Times lists, win Hugo’s, Nebulas, and such and have been writing for decades. Let’s take that overall list for career start dates.
George R.R. Martin: 1970; 1996 for A Game of Thrones
Terry Pratchett: 1971
Stephen King: 1974; 1982 for The Dark ToweeEoin Colfe
Neil Gaiman: 1984
Robin Hobb (Megan Lindholm): 1983
Robert Jordan: 1990
Susanna Clarke: 1996
Rick Riordan: 1997; 2008 for Percy Jackson
J.K. Rowling: 1997
Jonathan Stroud: 1997
Eoin Colfer: 1998
Jacqueline Carey: 2001
Christopher Paolini: 2002 (he’s
forty?!? Dear God, I’m old…)
Brandon Sanderson: 2005 (among other things, the first author to have multiple multi-million-dollar crowdfunding campaigns)
Joe Abercrombie: 2006
Scott Lynch: 2006
Naomi Novak: 2006
Cassandra Clare: 2007
Patrick Rothfuss: 2007 (and a fizzle to match Game of Thrones but that’s another story)
Peter V. Brett: 2008
Kristin Cashore: 2008
Brent Weeks: 2008
Erin Morganstern: 2011
Not a bad spread, that. And the second 50 entries would fill in gaps, and 101-200 more. One thing to note is a bunch of the most popular authors work in YA, in addition to adult fantasy or exclusively, and someone in my cohort (born 1965j is unlikely to know anything about unless they have fantasy-reading kids or for some reason make a deliberate effort to keep up with the field. The same is true for what they’re calling “romantasy” these days. All of which is to say that the universe of fantasy as read by someone who’s at my level of grizzled grognardishness is vastly smaller than the universe of fantasy as read by other people who may well also play D&D and have well-informed opinions about what wizards should look like.
Okay, I did have fun doing this research, and learned some interesting things doing it,but now my brain is going to take a vacation while I get some supper.