Malcolm Hansen was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Adopted by two Civil Rights activists, he grew up in Morocco, Spain, Germany, and various parts of the United States. Malcolm left home as a teenager and, after two years of high school education, went to Stanford, earning a BA in philosophy. He worked in the software industry in California before setting off for what turned out to be a decade of traveling throughout Central America, South America, and Europe. Malcolm returned to the U.S. to complete an MFA in Fiction at Columbia University. His debut novel, They Come in All Colors, won the First Novel Award from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association and was nominated for a NAACP Image Award.