Bissell's father served in the Marines during the Vietnam War, alongside author and journalist Philip Caputo.

[3] Bissell has written for Harper's Magazine, Slate, The New Republic,[4] and The Virginia Quarterly Review, where he is a contributing editor.

[8] In 2005, Pantheon published a collection of Bissell's short fiction, God Lives in St. Petersburg: and Other Stories.

Many of the book's essays were written on assignment by established publications such as The Observer[10] and The New Yorker,[11] and argued the importance of videogames as a cultural and social movement.

[13] Bissell wrote about the cult film The Room in a 2010 article ("Cinema Crudité") published in Harper's Magazine.

[14] In May 2011, he signed on to co-write (with actor Greg Sestero) a closer look at the film – the resultant book, The Disaster Artist, was published by Simon and Schuster in October 2013.

[16] He has cited Philip Caputo as a major influence, along with Michigan writers Jim Harrison and Thomas McGuane.