Laurie Notaro was born in Brooklyn, New York, and raised in Phoenix, Arizona. She packed her bags for Eugene, Oregon, once she realized that since she was past thirty, her mother could no longer report her as a teenage runaway. She is the author of The Idiot Girls' Action-Adventure Club, Autobiography of a Fat Bride, I Love Everybody, We Thought You'd Be Prettier, and An Idiot Girl's Christmas.