Braunbeck was born in Newark, Ohio (the city that serves as the model for the fictitious Cedar Hill in many of his stories). He writes in a number of different genres, but principally horror. His work has received several awards, including the Horror Writers Association Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in Best Short Fiction in 2003 and 2005 for "Duty" and "We Now Pause for Station Identification," respectively. He also won their 2006 award for Best Fiction Collection with his anthology Destinations Unknown from Cemetery Dance Publications. His novella "Kiss of the Mudman" received the International Horror Guild Award for Long Fiction in 2006.

Nearly 200 of his short stories have appeared in various publications such as The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Cemetery Dance, Sword of Ice and Other Tales of Valdemar, and The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror. Some of his most popular stories are mysteries that have appeared in the Cat Crimes anthology series. In 2007 his story "Rami Temporales" was adapted by Stranger Things into a short film entitled "One of Those Faces".

Braunbeck also teaches creative writing at Seton Hill University, Pennsylvania, in an innovative low-residency Master of Fine Arts degree program in Writing Popular Fiction.

He has also served as co-editor for the latest installment of the Masques horror-anthology series created by Jerry Williamson, Masques V. For a time he was also a regular contributor to Everything2 and served briefly as a content editor there.

In 2005-2006, Mr. Braunbeck served a term as President of the Horror Writers Association. He is married to Lucy A. Snyder, a science fiction/fantasy writer, and they reside together in Columbus, Ohio. He dubbing the Dreadtime Stories series April Fool.

Novels

• (1998) Isaac Asimov's I-Bots (co-written with Steve Perry)
• (2000) The Indifference of Heaven
• (2000) In Hollow Houses
• (2001) This Flesh Unknown
• (2004) In Silent Graves
• (2005) In the Midnight Museum
• (2005) Keepers
• (2006) Prodigal Blues
• (2007) Mr. Hands
• (2008) Coffin County
• (2009) Far Dark Fields

Collections

• (1997) Things Left Behind
• (2001) Escaping Purgatory
• (2002) Sorties, Cathexes, and Personal Effects
• (2003) The Collected Cedar Hill Stories, Volume 1
• (2003) X3 (contains three science fiction novellas: "One Brown Mouse," "At Eternity's Gate," and "Palimpest Day").
• (2003) A Little Orange Book Of Odd Stories
• (2004) From Beneath these Fields of Blood
• (2005) The Collected Cedar Hill Stories, Volume 2
• (2006) Destinations Unknown

Nonfiction books

• (2003) Horror As A Way Of Life

Books edited

• (2006) Masques V (co-edited with Jerry Williamson)
• (2007) Five Strokes to Midnight (co-edited with Hank Schwaeble)