Burroughs is the son of poet and writer Margaret Robison and the late John G. Robison, head of the philosophy department at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He is also the younger brother of John Elder Robison. When he was 12, his mother sent him to live with her psychiatrist's family in western Massachusetts.

His books are published by St. Martin's Press (hardcover) and Picador (trade paperback). Some of his childhood experiences were chronicled in Running with Scissors.