Bill Holbrook was born in Los Angeles in 1958 and grew up in Huntsville, Ala., after his father was transferred to work in the space program. According to his mother, he started his career as an artist by drawing on the household walls.

Holbrook majored in Illustration and Visual Design at Auburn University in Alabama. He was the Art Director of the student newspaper, where he produced a weekly comic strip. He also did the paper's editorial cartoons and was published regularly in the Huntsville Times and the Monroe Journal. After graduation in 1980, Holbrook joined the Atlanta Constitution as an editorial staff artist. But his ambition remained to do a syndicated strip of his own.

During a 1982 visit to relatives on the West Coast, Holbrook was able to meet with Peanuts creator Charles Schulz, who advised him to continually work on comic strip ideas, weeding out the bad, keeping the good, rather than waiting for one big concept. Armed with that advice, Holbrook created a strip in the fall of that year about a college graduate working in a run-down diner. It did not stir syndicate interest, but what he learned on the strip helped the young cartoonist create his first winner, On the Fastrack, which was launched in syndication by King Features in 1984. There have been three anthologies of strips published.

In October 1989, Holbrook launched his second strip, Safe Havens. Initially about a day care center, this strip evolved into the adventures of Samantha Argus and her friends. King Features has distributed the comic since 1993.

In September 1995, Bill began a third strip called Kevin & Kell about a functional family of animals in a dysfunctional world. The strip is available online and also in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Holbrook lives in the Atlanta area with his wife and two daughters.