Jeff Kinney

Biography

Jeff Kinney (born 1971) originally created Diary of a Wimpy Kid as an online comic on Funbrain.com starting in 2004, where it accumulated 20 million reads before being published as a book in 2007. Kinney has said he doesn't consider himself a writer or an artist — he sees himself as a cartoonist who happened to write a book. He drew extensively on his own middle school experiences in Fort Washington, Maryland, and has described Greg as a version of himself with the self-awareness removed. Kinney spent eight years developing the series before publication, treating the diary format as a way to capture how children actually think rather than how adults wish children thought.

Jeff Kinney at a glance