Robert Olen Butler was born in Granite City, Illinois. He studied theater at Northwestern University and earned a master's degree at the University of Iowa. From 1969 to 1971 he served in Vietnam as an Army counter-intelligence agent and later as a translator.
He taught creative writing at McNeese State University from 1985 to 2000 and later at Florida State University. A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain (1992) won the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. His later books include Tabloid Dreams, Severance and the novel Perfume River.