Thomas King's life is as multifaceted as his oeuvre, reflecting mythic and postmodern, classic and popular, Native oral and Western literary influences. Born in Sacramento, California, in 1943 to a Cherokee father and a Greek-German mother, King held various jobs (as a photojournalist in Australia and New Zealand, bank teller, ambulance driver, and tool designer for Boeing Aircraft) before pursuing a career as an academic and writer. After graduating from Chico State College he joined the doctoral program and later worked at the University of Utah, but then moved to Canada, where he taught at the University of Lethbridge between 1980 and 1989. It was during this time that King had his most extensive contacts with Native people (Cree and Blackfoot on the surrounding reserves), experiences that influenced much of his writing. He returned to the United States for a position as an associate professor of American and Native Studies at the University of Minnesota (1989–95), but eventually settled in Canada. King currently teaches English and Creative Writing at the University of Guelph, Ontario, and is a senior fellow of Massey College at the University of Toronto.

King's works to date comprise two volumes of short fiction (One Good Story, That One, 1993, and A Short History of Indians in Canada, 2005), five novels (Medicine River, 1989; Green Grass, Running Water, 1993, nominated for the prestigious Governor General's Award for Fiction and winner of the Canadian Authors’ Award for Fiction; Truth and Bright Water, 1999; under the pen name of Hartley GoodWeather: DreadfulWater Shows Up, 2002, and The Red Power Murders: A DreadfulWater Mystery, 2006, two Native detective stories), and, finally, two children's books. In addition, King, who is considered to be Canada's foremost Native writer, edited one of the first collections of short fiction by Canadian Native writers, All My Relations: An Anthology of Contemporary Canadian Native Fiction in 1990. He also collaborated closely with the CBC, providing a number of film and radio scripts (for the most part based on his own fictional works) and designing and participating in the widely popular CBC radio show The Dead Dog Café Comedy Hour (1996–2001).