[1] He was the author of four books for young adults, including It's Kind of a Funny Story (2006), which NPR placed at #56 in its list of the "100 Best-Ever Teen Novels"[2] and which is the basis of the film of the same name.

Vizzini had depression, spending time in a psychiatric ward in his early 20s, and authoring several works about the illness.

[4] Vizzini's first published work was an essay he submitted to the New York Press, an alternative newspaper, about winning honorable mention at the 1996 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards.

[6] A Los Angeles Times review called the novel "impressive," noting that "Vizzini’s sense of pacing, structure and character is solid, and his casual vernacular is dead-on, simultaneously capturing the paranoia and self-obsessed negativity of depression as well as the sexual curiosity of adolescence.

"[13] With Nick Antosca, Vizzini wrote two episodes of the 2012 season of MTV's supernatural drama Teen Wolf.

[14] In 2013, House of Secrets, the first novel in a middle grade fantasy series by Vizzini and filmmaker Chris Columbus, was published.

He spoke at UCLA; The Dalton School; the Brooklyn, New York, and Chicago Public Libraries; Murray State University; NYU; The National Council of Teachers of English; and a Master's Tea at Yale.

"[22] Vizzini, who often spoke and wrote about his struggles with severe clinical depression, died by suicide on December 19, 2013, in Brooklyn, New York, at the age of 32.

The writer's brother, Daniel, told reporters that Vizzini had jumped off the roof of the building where their parents lived.