Michael Hogan was born in Newport, Rhode Island. He is the author of twenty books including the historical best-seller, The Irish Soldiers of Mexico. His work has appeared in numerous periodicals including the Paris Review, the Iowa Review, New Letters and the Harvard Review, and New Letters, as well as in many anthologies such as Thirty Years of the Pushcart Prize, ed. by Joan Murray. (Pushcart Press ,2006); Literature, ed. by Robert Diyanni, (Random House, 2001); Sound and Sense, ed. by Laurence Perrine and Thomas Arp. (Harcourt, Brace, 1996), and One Hundred Great Essays (Penguin, 2013).

His many awards include fellowships from the Alden Dow Creativity Center, the Colorado Humanities Program, and the National Endowment for the Arts, two Pushcart Prizes, as well as the Grace Stoddard Literary Fellowship from the University of Arizona, and a career commendation for outstanding service by the Office of Overseas Schools, U.S. Department of State. From 1990 to 2004 Hogan headed the English Department at the American School Foundation of Guadalajara, A.C., served as faculty advisor to the school's internationally recognized literary magazine, Sin Fronteras, and as a professor of International Relations (1996-2000) at the Autonomous University of Guadalajara. Since 2004 he has been a consultant to the College Board in Latin America, and to the U.S.

Department of State's Office of Overseas Schools. Hogan lives in Colonia Providencia, Guadalajara, with the textile artist Lucinda Mayo, and their Dutch shepherd, Molly Malone.