Charles Baxter was born in Minneapolis and graduated from Macalester College, in Saint Paul. After completing graduate work in English at the State University of New York at Buffalo, he taught for several years at Wayne State University in Detroit. In 1989, he moved to the Department of English at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and its MFA program. He now teaches at the University of Minnesota.

Baxter is the author of four novels, four collections of short stories, three collections of poems, and a collection of essays on fiction, and is the editor of other works.