Glenn Taylor was born in Huntington on January 12, 1975, to Maury and Carol Taylor. His parents also were both native West Virginians; Maury grew up in Mingo County and Carol in Marion County, having met at West Virginia University in 1961. After graduating from Huntington High School in 1993, Taylor went on to get his undergraduate degree in English and Creative Writing (1997) and master’s in English with a focus on Fiction Writing (1999), both at Ohio University. He earned his MFA in Fiction at Texas State University (2002), while teaching an English course at the school and also working sporadically as a substitute teacher.

Taylor began writing at around 9 or 10 years old, inspired by paperbacks he would buy in old dime bins, such as Somebody Up There Likes Me by Rocky Graziano. His debut novel, The Ballad of Trenchmouth Taggart, was originally published by West Virginia University Press in 2008 and was named a Barnes & Noble Discover pick and a finalist for the 2008 National Book Critics Circle Award. The narrative follows a man born and orphaned in 1903, nicknamed for his lifelong oral deformity. Taggart grew up in the hills of southern West Virginia, fought in the Mine Wars, and spent much of his time running from his past. After it was originally published, Dan Halpern bought Trenchmouth Taggart and reissued it through Ecco/HarperCollins, allowing it to be published internationally in France, England, Italy, Germany, and other countries.

Taylor’s second novel, The Marrowbone Marble Company, was also published by Ecco (2010). It follows Loyal Ledford after World War II, as he stumbles into the unsettling and mysterious past of the Marrowbone cult and forges the Marrowbone Marble Company with his cousins. The place became a hub for the civil rights movement.

His third novel, A Hanging at Cinder Bottom (2015) was a Los Angeles Times summer reading pick and an editors’ choice pick in the New York Times. His fourth and latest novel, The Songs of Betty Baach, won the 2023 Juniper Prize in Fiction. Taylor’s work has appeared in numerous journals and magazines such as The Guardian, Oxford American, GQ, Electric Literature, and Tin House, among others.

After Taylor graduated high school he left West Virginia, but returned 18 years later, in 2011, to teach English at WVU for 12 years as an associate professor. He now resides in Morgantown with his wife, Margaret. Taylor remarks that his time growing up in West Virginia tuned his ear to the beautiful and poetic ways people talk and tell stories to one another, particularly in their phrases and parts of speech.