Larry O. Dean was born and raised in Flint, Michigan. As a young man, he worked with Academy Award-winning filmmaker Michael Moore, published essays and reviews on popular culture in the alternative press, and also cartooned for fanzines and other underground outlets. He attended the University of Michigan, where he won three Hopwood Awards in creative writing, and  Murray State University's low-residency MFA program. He is the author of full-length collections Activities of Daily Living (2017) and Brief Nudity (2013), and the chapbooks Rate of Exchange & Other Poems (1988); Barking Up the Wrong Tree (1989); QWERTYUIOP (1989); Eyes, Ears, Nose & Throat (1990); Workers' Comp. (1995); Identity Theft for Dummies (2003); I Am Spam (2004), About the Author (2011); abbrev (2011), and Basic Cable Couplets (2012). His work has been widely anthologized and translated into Chinese, Italian, and Spanish.

Dean is also a singer, songwriter, and producer, working both solo as well as with several 'hard pop' bands. He lives in Chicago, where he teaches creative writing, literature, and composition, and works as a poet-in-residence in the Chicago Public Schools through the Poetry Center of Chicago's Hands on Stanzas program.