Lawrence Watt-Evans is one of the pseudonyms of American science fiction and fantasy author Lawrence Watt Evans (another pseudonym, used primarily for science fiction, is Nathan Archer). Born in Arlington Massachusetts as the fourth of six children, he made his first attempts at professional writing when he was eight.

After graduating from Bedford High School in Bedford, MA, he attended Princeton University but left without a degree. By the rules of Princeton, he could not re-apply for a year, and he resolved to use it to become a writer & began to seriously try to sell his writing, but sold nothing significant until he produced The Lure of the Basilisk in 1978 (published 1980) and thereupon began writing full time. Despite having sold a short story and several articles under his real name, he initially submitted his first novel under a pseudonym; it was the editor of that novel, Lester Del Rey, who first demanded he use his real name and then added the hyphen to create the name Lawrence Watt-Evans. Evans had insisted on including his middle name to avoid confusion with a contemporary non-fiction writer also named Lawrence Evans, and del Rey had then added the hyphen "to make it more distinctive" .