Don Silver was born and raised in Philadelphia, studied business in college and moved to New York City in the late 1970s, where he worked as an A&R man for Arista Records, an independent record producer and an artist manager.

In his mid-twenties, he returned to Philadelphia and ran a mid-sized manufacturing company and in 1999, took an MFA in writing at Bennington College.  That same year, he quit corporate life to finish his first novel, Backward Facing Man.