Jim Carroll was born in New York City on August 1, 1951. When he was growing up on the tough streets of Manhattan, Carroll pursued careers as a basketball player and writer. While Carroll's massive drug use as a teenager extinguished any hope of his becoming a basketball star, his poetry about these drug experiences put him on the road to literary stardom. After the publication of his first two poetry collections, Organic Trains (1967) and Four Ups and One Down (1970), Carroll's poetry was relatively unknown outside underground circles. That changed with the publication of his third poetry collection, Living at the Movies (1973). By this time, Carroll was also making a name for himself with his autobiographical prose writing, which had begun appearing in various literary magazines in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

In 1978, these disjointed prose writings were collected in one limited-edition volume, entitled The Basketball Diaries...