Kinney was born on February 19, 1971 and raised in Fort washington, Maryland . Kinney attended Potomac Landing Elementary School and later BIshop McNamara High School, where he graduated in 1989. He has an older brother and sister, and a younger brother. He is of Irish accent. He attended the University of Maryland,in the early 1990s. It was in college that Kinney created a popular comic strip, Igdoof. Kinney graduated from the University of Maryland in 1993, originally majoring in computer science but switching to criminal justice in order to have more time to work on his comic.In January 1998, Kinney conceived the idea of a middle-school weakling named Greg Heffley, who writes illustrated stories about his personal life. In May 2004, Funbrain and Jeff Kinney released an online version of the story, titled Diary of a Wimpy Kid. The website made daily entries from September of that year to June 2005.He worked on his book for almost eight years, before showing it to a publisher in New York City, U.S.In February 2006, Kinney signed a multi-book deal with publisher Harry N Abrams to turn Diary of a Wimpy Kid into a print series.
