Bill Amend was born in 1962 in Northampton, Massachusetts and attended high school in Burlingame, California where he was a cartoonist on his high school newspaper. He attended Amherst College where he drew comics for the college paper. He majored in physics and graduated in 1984.
After a short time in the animation business, he decided to pursue a cartooning career and signed on with Universal Press Syndicate Fox Trot first appeared on April 10, 1988.
Bill Amend currently lives in the midwest USA with his wife and children.