He received his Bachelor of Divinity at Starr King School for the Ministry in 1961 and was ordained as a Unitarian Universalist minister.

[2] Fulghum came to prominence in the United States when his first collection of writings, All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten (1988), stayed on The New York Times bestseller lists for nearly two years.

[1] A twenty-fifth anniversary edition of Kindergarten has been published – updating and revising the original text, with the addition of twenty-five new stories.

[citation needed] Fulghum performed in two television adaptations of his work for PBS, and is a Grammy nominee for the spoken word award.

The first shares the same title as his first book, and was conceived and adapted by Ernest Zulia, with music and lyrics by David Caldwell.