Born February 21, 1962, Charles Michael Palahniuk spent his early childhood living out of a mobile home in Burbank, Washington. His parents, Carol and Fred Palahniuk, separated and divorced when he was fourteen, leaving Chuck and his siblings to spend much of their time on their maternal grandparent’s cattle ranch.

Written in stolen moments under truck chassis, while working as a mechanic, and on park benches to a soundtrack of The Downward Spiral and Pablo Honey, Fight Club–his most important novel to date–came into existence. Within months, Gerry Howard (then editor at WW Norton) convinced the higher-ups to take a chance on the fledgling writer, and Chuck soon had a book deal with a major publisher. But it wasn’t until 20th Century Fox took notice that Chuck nabbed an agent in Edward Hibbert (best known as Gil Chesterton, the food critic on Frasier,) who would go on to broker the deal for Fight Club the movie.

Directed by David Fincher, the adaptation of Fight Club was a flop at the box office, but achieved cult status on DVD. The year of its release, the film was Fox’s top selling disc, and critics everywhere finally began to embrace it. The film’s popularity drove sales of the novel, resulting in multiple re-printings over the next few years.

Since, Palahniuk has become a figurehead for transgressive fiction and a writers whose works vary from the literary tendencies of Fight Club to the repulsive fantasies that fill his latter works such as the short story Guts and the novel Rant. Chuck currently resides in the Pacific Northwest.