Born in Greensboro, North Carolina, and raised in Durham, N.C., Laurel, Mississippi and Sanford Florida Doug Marlette graduated from Florida State University and began drawing political cartoons for The Charlotte Observer in 1972. He joined the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in 1987, New York Newsday in 1989, the Tallahassee Democrat in 2002 and the Tulsa World in 2006.

His editorial cartoons and his comic strip, Kudzu, are syndicated in newspapers worldwide. He has won every major award for editorial cartooning including the 1988 Pulitzer Prize. He has received the National Headliners Award for Consistently Outstanding Editorial Cartoons three times, the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Award for editorial cartooning twice, First Prize in the John Fischetti Memorial Cartoon Competition twice and was the first and only cartoonist ever awarded a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard University.

His work has appeared in Time, Newsweek, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and he has appeared on NBC's Today Show, CBS's Morning News, ABC's Good Morning America, ABC's Nightline, National Public Radio's Morning Edition, All Things Considered and the Jim Lehrer News-Hour.

He has written an ethics column for Esquire and contributed to The New Republic, The Nation, Men's Journal, The Paris Review, Columbia Journalism Review and Salon.com.

His work is collected in 19 volumes, including In Your Face: A Cartoonist at Work, Faux Bubba: Bill and Hillary Go To Washington, Gone With The Kudzu, I Feel Your Pain, What Would Marlette Drive?, and A Town So Backwards Even the Episcopalians Handle Snakes. He also co-wrote the screenplay, 'Ex' with Pat Conroy.

In Your Face: A Cartoonist At Work was selected by the American Library Association as one of its Best Books of the Year for Young People, becoming an instant classic in the field of how-to, inspirational works on cartooning, and influencing a new generation of young artists. 

 In 1993 the University of Newcastle at Newcastle-On-Tyne in England, celebrating the thirtieth anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King’s first honorary doctorate bestowed there after receiving his Nobel Peace Prize, invited Marlette to exhibit his cartoons on race in America and lecture at a symposium of distinguished European scholars on the American South.

The musical adaptation of his comic strip into Kudzu, A Southern Musical in collaboration with The Red Clay Ramblers was produced at Duke University and at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C. and has been published by Samuel French Co. The musical's cast album CD was released in 2003.

Doug Marlette's first novel, The Bridge, was published by HarperCollins in October, 2001 and was voted Best Book of the Year for Fiction by the Southeast Booksellers Association (SEBA) in 2002. It was voted one of the best books of the last five years by BookSense, the American Booksellers Association. Paramount Pictures purchased the rights for a film adaptation for Tom Cruise.

He was appointed Distinguished Visiting Professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2001 and inducted into the UNC Journalism Hall of Fame in 2002. He serves on the UNC J-School's Board of Visitors.

He was appointed a Gaylord Distinguished Visiting Lecturer at the University of Oklahoma's College of Journalism and Mass Communication for 2006-2007.

His second novel, Magic Time, was published by Sarah Crichton Books/Farrar, Straus & Giroux in October, 2006, and is out in trade paperback from Picador in June, 2007.