Michael A. Burstein was born in New York City in 1970, and grew up in the neighborhood of Forest Hills in the borough of Queens. He attended Hunter College High School in Manhattan. In 1991 he graduated from Harvard College with a degree in Physics, and in 1993 he earned a Master's in Physics from Boston University. In 1994 he attended the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writer's Workshop. Burstein lives with his wife Nomi in the town of Brookline, Massachusetts, where he is an elected Town Meeting Member. When not writing, he is the Science Coordinator K-8 and Middle School Science Teacher at the Rashi School in Newton, Massachusetts. He has given lectures and spoken at various science fiction conferences and libraries, and to groups at MIT and Harvard.