Marjorie Sharmat celebrates her birthday on November 12th. She was born and grew up in Portland, Maine.

She describes herself in childhood as a stereotypical future writer—introspective, nonathletic, nearsighted, and shy. She started to write stories and poems by the age of eight, and "published" a newspaper with a friend.

She studied merchandising at Westbrook Junior College as she thought she could never become a published writer. She worked for many years at Yale in the Circulation Library. Her first published work was a four-word advertising slogan for the Grant Stores.

Her interest in children's books began after the birth of her sons and her first book, Rex, was published by Harper & Row in 1967. She has now written over sixty books, many that have been translated into eleven foreign languages. Nate the Great, Maggie Marmelstein for President, The Day I Was Born, and The Big Fat Enormous Lie are some of her titles. Sharmat now resides in Arizona "suffering from a chronic case of blizzard nostalgia."