Daniel Handler is also the author of the novels We are Pirates, The Basic Eight, Watch Your Mouth, Adverbs, and, with Maira Kalman, Why We Broke Up, which won the Michael J. Printz Honor. He also worked with Kalman on the book Girls Standing on Lawns and Hurry Up and Wait. He also edited The Best Nonrequired Reading of 2014, which includes an introduction by Lemony Snicket

As Lemony Snicket, Daniel has written the best-selling series All The Wrong Questions as well as A Series of Unfortunate Events, which has sold more than 60 million copies, and was the basis of a feature film starring Jim Carrey and Meryl Streep, with Jude Law as Lemony Snicket. In 2014, Netflix acquired rights to produce an original series based on A Series of Unfortunate Events. Snicket is also the creator of several picture books, including the Charlotte Zolotow Award-winning The Dark, illustrated by Jon Klassen. His newest picture book is 29 Myths on the Swinster Pharmacy illustrated by Lisa Brown. Other Snicket titles include the picture book 13 Words, in collaboration with Maira Kalman, as well as Lemony Snicket: The Unauthorized Biography, The Beatrice Letters, Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can’t Avoid, and two books for Christmas: The Lump of Coal and The Latke Who Couldn’t Stop Screaming: a Christmas Story. He is currently working on the final book in the All the Wrong Questions series; Why Is This Night Different from All Other Nights?.

Daniel’s criticism has appeared in The New York Times, Newsday, The San Francisco Chronicle, and The Believer, where he is has a column exploring the Nobel Prize in Literature titled “What The Swedes Read.” He recently wrote the inaugural dispatch for the Wall Street Journal’s monthly feature on literary cocktails, “Message in a Bottle,” and the foreword for Tin House’s reissue of Bernard DeVoto’s The Hour. He has worked as a screenwriter on the adaptation of A Series Of Unfortunate Events, as well as the independent films Rick, based on Verdi’s opera, Rigoletto, and Kill The Poor. He also established, in partnership with the American Library Association, the Lemony Snicket Prize for Noble Librarians Faced With Adversity.

Daniel also works extensively in music, serving as the adjunct accordionist for the music group The Magnetic Fields and collaborating with composer Nathaniel Stookey on a piece commissioned and recorded by the San Francisco Symphony, entitled "The Composer Is Dead", which has been performed all over the world and is now a book with CD. He is currently at work on a commission from the Royal Shakespeare Company on a stage musical in collaboration with songwriter Stephin Merritt.

He is a graduate of Wesleyan University, and lives in his native San Francisco with his wife, illustrator Lisa Brown, and their son.