Nic Pizzolatto was born in New Orleans and raised in Lake Charles, Louisiana. He was educated at Louisiana State University and the University of Arkansas, where he received several awards for his writing. 

His work has been published in the Atlantic, Oxford American, Iowa Review, Missouri Review, and other magazines. He has been a finalist for the National Magazine Award, and his collection of stories Between Here and the Yellow Sea was named by Poets & Writers magazine as a top five fiction debut of 2006. 

Pizzolatto is primarily known for having created and written the first three seasons of True Detective. His first novel, Galveston, was published in 2010 and later adapted into a film directed by Mélanie Laurent in 2018. He also served as a screenwriter for Antoine Fuqua's 2016 remake of The Magnificent Seven. 2021 saw the release of his second collaboration with Fuqua, The Guilty, starring Jake Gyllenhaal and distributed by Netflix.