Robert Cormier was born on January 17, 1925, in Leominster, Massachusetts, a small town where he has lived all his life. The second of eight children of Lucien Joseph and Irma Collins Cormier, he attended local schools before spending a year at Fitchburg Teachers College, later called Fitchburg State College. Years later, in 1977, Cormier received an honorary doctor of letters degree from that same college.

In 1946 Cormier began writing commercials for a local radio station in Worcester, Massachusetts, and from 1948 to 1955 he served as a reporter for the Worcester Telegram & Gazette. Beginning in 1955, Cormier became a reporter for the Fitchburg Sentinel, later known as the Fitchburg-Leominster Sentinel. He worked his way up to associate editor before resigning in 1978. Cormier's background in advertising and journalism served as an apprenticeship for his fiction writing; it also earned him a decent living with which he supported his wife Constance...