William Warner Sleator III was born February 13, 1945 in Harve de Grace, Maryland. His father, William Warner Sleator, Jr., was a professor and his mother was a physician. Three elements of his childhood have had a profound effect on his writing: science, reading, and music. Sleator says of his upbringing and his writing: "Everybody in my family is a scientist except me. I always liked science but was never good enough to be a real scientist. I was the dumbest person in the advanced class. Still, I learned a lot. I prefer science fiction that has some basis in reality: psychological stories, time-travel stories, but especially stories about people. My best books have a physical reality." Today Sleator is known as a critically acclaimed writer of science fiction.

His early interest in playing the piano has also influenced his writing. He began piano lessons at...