Amanda Bales completed her B.A. in English and Theater at Oklahoma State University. Since leaving, she has lived in various places, including four years in a dry cabin in Fairbanks, Alaska, where she completed her M.F.A. in Creative Writing with an emphasis in Fiction. She is currently a Lecturer in Rhetoric and Creative Writing at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

Although her primary creative focus is as a writer of short fiction, she also works in poetry, nonfiction, and experimental forms. Her critical work focuses on second person narratives, using a variety of critical frameworks to engage this oft-maligned perspective, including Social Psychology, in which she discusses  the use of second person narratives as a means of grappling with empathy gaps.