When he was 19, miners raised money for his education and he started attending a teachers' seminary in Biała Krakowska, from which he graduated in 1914.

He wrote his most important books in the late 1920s and early 1930s becoming the only notable Silesian Polish-language prosaist of the interwar period.

[1] The supposed reason given for his arrest was his "anti-German activity" before the war and the fact that a dog in one of his novels ("Wyrąbany chodnik") was called "Bismarck".

[a] From his release until November 1946, Morcinek resided in France, Italy and Belgium and cooperated with Polish émigré press there.

Morcinek resumed his writing and continued to concentrate on Silesian issues but widen his scope to books for children and also epistolography.

After the war, he was a supporter of Polish United Workers' Party and was a member of the Sejm (parliament) from Katowice electoral district (1952–1957).