[1] Michael A. Burstein was born in New York City, and grew up in Forest Hills in the borough of Queens.
In 1995 he studied comic book writing under Dennis O'Neil at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan.
Two years later, Burstein won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer at the 1997 World Science Fiction Convention, LoneStarCon2.
Burstein subsequently received Hugo nominations for "Broken Symmetry", "Cosmic Corkscrew", "Kaddish for the Last Survivor" (also a Nebula Award nominee), "Spaceships", "Paying It Forward", "Decisions", "Time Ablaze", "Seventy-Five Years", and "TelePresence", and a Nebula and Sturgeon Award nomination for "Reality Check".
[3] Burstein is the editor of Jewish Futures: Stories from the World's Oldest Diaspora, an anthology of speculative fiction published by Fantastic Books on August 7, 2023.
The book's crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter was launched in October of 2022 by Ian Randal Strock and met its funding goal in four days.