Born in Brooklyn, Mark Podwal was raised in Flushing, Queens. Though he always loved to draw, Podwal never pursued formal art training and eventually his parents encouraged him to become a physician. While attending New York University School of Medicine, his passion for drawing once again crept in: the tumultuous events of the 1960’s compelled Podwal to create a series of political drawings that were published as his first book The Decline and Fall of the American Empire. These images were brought to the attention of an art director at The New York Times, and in 1972, his first drawing appeared on its OP-ED page. That drawing of the Munich massacre was later included in an exhibition at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs Palais du Louvre.

Podwal is the author (10) and illustrator of numerous books including Jerusalem Sky: Stars, Crosses and Crescents, A Sweet Year, Doctored Drawings, A Jewish Bestiary, Freud’s da Vinci, among others. King Solomon and His Magic Ring, a collaboration with Elie Wiesel, won a Silver Medal from the Society of Illustrators in 1999 and You Never Know, his collaboration with Francine Prose, won a National Jewish Book Award in 1998.

Fallen Angels, a collaboration with Harold Bloom is to be published in the fall of 2007. Author Cynthia Ozick has given Podwal the Hebrew name Baal Kav Emet, or "Master of the True Line." As she explains in her essay Ink & Inkling, "[Podwal] joins metaphysics to physics: essence to presence; ideas to real objects…The Master of the True Line
is also master of hidden meanings, of symbol and metaphor." In 1996, the French government named Podwal an Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters. Hebrew College, Newton Centre, Massachusetts, in 2003 awarded him a Doctor of Humane Letters Honoris Causa. In 2006, The Jewish Museum in Prague chose Podwal to create its Centennial print.