Raised in cities and small towns around Michigan, Donald Lystra received degrees in electrical engineering and sociology from the University of Michigan. He worked on electrical power plants before beginning to write fiction in the mid-1990s. He has received creative writing fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and from the MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, New Hapshire, and his work was cited for Special Mention in the 2002 Pushcart Prizes. Mr. Lystra and his wife divide their time between Ann Arbor and a farm in northern Michigan. He has two grown children.

Season of Water and Ice, his first novel, was the winner of the 2009 Midwest Book Award for fiction, and it was named by the Library of Michigan as a Michigan Notable Book for 2010.