Daniel Pennac was born in 1944. After studying literature, he taught from 1969 to 1995.

His first novels, published in the Série Noire and then in the Blanche collection by Gallimard, were a huge success: Au Bonheur des ogres, La Fée Carabine, La Petite marchande de prose, etc. His two essays in favour of reading, Comme un roman (1992) and Chagrin d'école (2007), have become bestsellers. He has also published a novel, Journal d'un corps (Collection Blanche, 2012, Folio no. 5733), a collection of plays, Le 6e Continent preceded by Ancien malade des hôpitaux de Paris (Collection Blanche, 2012, Folio no. 5873), and the return of the tribulations of Benjamin Malaussène with Le cas Malaussène:Ils m'ont menti (Collection Blanche, 2017) and Terminus Malaussène in 2023 (Collection Blanche, January 2023). He has also published a memoir, Mon frère (My Brother), a tribute to his late brother and Herman Melville's Bartleby (Collection Blanche, 2018), followed in 2020 by La loi du rêveur (The Dreamer's Law), which combines dreams and reality with his passion for Federico Fellini (Collection Blanche, 2020).

Alongside his work for adults, Pennac has continued to write for young people. Cabot-Caboche and L'œil du loup (Nathan, 1982, 1984), the Kamo series (Gallimard Jeunesse, 1997-2007), Le roman d'Ernest et Célestine (Casterman, 2012), adapted for the screen by Benjamin Renner from a screenplay by the author, Les mots ont des oreilles, Les mots se mangent and Les mots poilus with illustrations by Florence Cestac (Le Robert, 2021 and 2022 and 2023). Cabot-Caboche is adapted as a comic strip by Grégory Panaccione (Delcourt, 2021) and L'œil du Loup by Mathieu Sapin (Nathan, 2023).