Maureen Johnson was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. An only child, she grew up playing Candy Land by herself and doing a lot of writing. The Candy Land had no benefit at all and just makes people sad when she tells them about it, but the writing part worked out well.

Although she is not Catholic, Maureen attended an all-girl Catholic preparatory high school in Philadelphia (a school that later provided the setting of Devilish). On the cold January night that she was admitted, she was greeted by a large oil painting of a row of nuns being mowed down by Nazis with machine guns and falling into a mass grave. This would set the tone for the next four years of her life. Locked inside gulag-a place where having slouched kneesocks was considered a crime and the only man in sight was the unfortunately named Father Hickey-Maureen had ample opportunity to fantasize about escape. She also learned how to make stuff up on the fly, as she spent at least two of those years hiding the fact that she was not Catholic. The fantasies and deceptions of her youth would later become the basis of several books.

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