Michael Martone was born in Fort Wayne, Indiana, where he learned at a very early age about Art Smith, ¿The Bird Boy of Fort Wayne,¿ and the adventures of this early aviation pioneer. Martone has written or edited over twenty books of fiction, nonfiction, essays, and short stories, including The Moon over Wapakoneta (FC2, 2018), Brooding (University of Georgia Press, 2018), Winesburg, Indiana (Indiana University Press, 2015), Four for a Quarter (FC2, 2011), and Michael Martone (FC2, 2005), a memoir in contributor's notes. His stories and essays have appeared in The Best American Stories, The Best American Essays, Harper's, Esquire, Denver Quarterly, Iowa Review, Bomb, American Short Fiction, and elsewhere.

He attended Butler University and graduated from Indiana University. He holds an MA from The Writing Seminars of The Johns Hopkins University. He is the recipient of two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and a grant from the Ingram Merril Foundation. Among his numerous awards, he received the Indiana Authors Award in 2013 and the Mark Twain Award for Distinguished Contribution to Midwestern Literature in 2016.

Michael Martone is currently a Professor at the University of Alabama, where he has been teaching since 1996. He has been a faculty member of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College since 1988. He has taught at Iowa State University, Harvard University, and Syracuse University. He lives in Tuscaloosa, AL.