Zerocalcare was born in Arezzo on December 12, 1983. After living in France, he moved to Rebibbia (Rome), a neighborhood to which the author is very close. Always very active in the world of social centers, in 2011 he created his first comic book, "The Armadillo Prophecy", which was reprinted in color in 2012 by the Milanese publishing house BAO Publishing. Also in 2012 he published his second book, "An Octopus at the Throat", in which he attempted a wide-ranging story for the first time. In 2013, "Every Damned Monday Out of Two" was released, a collection of the blog's stories. From the same year is "Dodici", an apocalypse-zombie story, a not too veiled declaration of love towards his neighborhood, Rebibbia.

In 2014, "Forget My Name" was published, the author's fifth book, which was nominated for the Strega Prize in 2015. After finishing in the dozen finalists, the book takes second place in the “Youth” section. In the same year, he won the award “Book of the Year” for the Radio 3 Rai programme Fahrenheit.

Before the release of the blog's second collection, "L'elenco telefono degli accolli," in early 2015, in the magazine Internazionale, Zerocalcare published a comic book reportage entitled "Kobane Calling," in which he recounts his experience on the Turkish-Syrian border in support of the Kurdish people. The reportage, enriched by an unpublished second part, became a book in 2016, selling over 120,000 copies, winning the 2017 Micheluzzi Prize for Best Book and which has been translated into eight languages.
2017 was the year of the Artist Edition of his masterpiece "The Armadillo Prophecy", the title that inspired the film of the same name presented in 2018 at the 75th edition of the Venice Film Festival. The film, directed by Emanuele Scaringi, is presented in the “New Horizons” category. In the same year, Zerocalcare created the two-volume work "Macerie prime", divided into "Macerie prime – If an armadillo on a winter night" and "Macerie prime – Six months later". The work only increases the popularity of one of the most important storytellers of our time.

In 2019, his success was confirmed by the exhibition dedicated to him, "Scavare Fossati – Nutrire crocodili," exhibited at the MAXXI in Rome, for which BAO Publishing edited the catalogue of the same name, rich in unpublished works and in-depth articles. Also in the same year, he published "The Pizza School in Professor Calcare's Face," a collection of stories and reviews of films and TV series that appeared on his blog and in major national magazines, linked by an unpublished story.

In 2020, he returns with a new graphic novel, "Skeletons," about the vicissitudes of his college years, and with "Dead Father," a dark tale that, through the figure of Santa Claus, becomes a metaphor for our precarious society.
In 2021, its following grew further thanks to the Netflix animated series "Ripping Along the Edges," which received universal acclaim from audiences and critics and quickly became a classic. A few months later, a new comic book collection is released containing stories related to social commitment combined with a consideration by the author of the personal journey he took to create the animated series: "Nothing new on the Rebibbia front".

In 2022, a second solo exhibition was dedicated to him, this time in Milan at La Fabbrica del Vapore, entitled "Dopo il botto", for which BAO Publishing edited and published the catalogue of the same name.
In 2023, Netflix's second animated series, "This World Won't Make Me Bad," will be released. It repeats the success of its predecessor and is accompanied by the book "Zerocalcare Animation Art Book," which recounts the author's creative process in animation and the work of all the professionals who contributed to its creation. In 2023, "Enciclopædia Calcarea" was released, featuring previously unpublished panels and stories as a companion piece to the collection of interviews that accompanied the releases of the "Zerocalcare 3D collection," the action figures of Zerocalcare's most iconic characters released for Centauria between 2020 and 2023.

In 2024 he returned to the wide-ranging graphic novel with "Quando muori resta a me", in which he recounts his relationship with his father in his unmistakable style. The graphic novel, which won him the "Boscarato Award" for Best Italian Comic, quickly became one of the best-selling books of 2024. In the autumn of the same year, again for BAO Publishing, "Cherry Bomb" made its debut, a series edited and directed by Zerocalcare himself. With titles from the foreign market (mainly French), the series soon became a point of reference for the publishing house and for Zerocalcare's audience.

In 2025, "Nel nido dei serpenti" was published, a volume in collaboration with Momo Edizioni that contains published and unpublished stories about the trials of Ilaria Salis and Maja T., symbols of a historical period in which the return of old and dangerous ideologies is jeopardizing the very concept of democracy. The first print run of the volume sold out within a week.