Paul Maher Jr. was born in Amarillo, Texas, where his father was stationed in the Air Force.
Upon graduating from Dracut High School, he joined the United States Navy where he served in the Persian Gulf aboard the USS Ramsey.
He attended Middlesex Community College and the University of Massachusetts Lowell, where he obtained an undergraduate degree in American studies.
Maher is also rewriting his book on the real-life adventures of Jack Kerouac's On the Road.
Ongoing projects are his transcriptions and annotations of the unpublished Extracts Related to the Indians by Henry David Thoreau, and Kalendar (working title) a film project based on Thoreau's natural history writings.