Gordon Korman was born in 1963 in Montreal, Quebec, and grew up in Thornhill, Ontario. Gordon wrote his first book when he was twelve years old. "It wasn't on purpose," Gordon says. "In my school, the track and field coach had to teach language arts, and for writing, he just told us to work on whatever we wanted for the rest of the year." As the class monitor for Arrow Reading Club, he sent his manuscript to Scholastic Canada. This Can't be Happening at Macdonald Hall! was published in 1978, when Gordon was fourteen! The Macdonald Hall series went on to encompass seven funny books that are still popular today. What is the secret to Gordon's success? "It's a combination between real life and pure imagination," he states. "I always start off with something real, but then I unleash my imagination to make it more exciting, funnier, or a better story. To be honest, by the time a book is done, you can't recognize much of the real-life part. It's been changed too much. But I never could have gotten there without it." Gordon moved to the United States as a college student in the film and film-writing department at New York University. He now lives with his wife and children on Long Island, NY.