He earned both Bachelor and Master of Arts degrees in English from Rutgers University, then received his Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop. While a student at Iowa, he won a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. He also received awards from the James Michener/Copernicus Society, the Henfield Foundation, the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, where he was twice a winter Fellow. He is the author of the novel Lawnboy and the memoir Famous Builder.

He has taught creative writing at The University of Houston, Antioch University, Sarah Lawrence College and New York University, in addition to several summer writing programs including the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Nebraska Summer Writers Conference, The Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, and the Indiana Summer Writers Conference.

He currently lives in New York City. His husband since 1995 is poet Mark Doty.