Andrew Lifson was born and raised in Queens, New York City. He holds degrees in English and Curriculum and Instruction from Queens College and the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He spent an academic year studying at the University of Kent in Canterbury, England, and has taught in the north of England. As a Peace Corps volunteer in the late 1970s, he taught English as a Second Language in Kabul, Afghanistan. Returning to the Midwest, he went on to teach at the elementary level in Wisconsin public schools for more than thirty years.
