Robert McLiam Wilson was born in Belfast on 24 February 1964. He studied English at St Catharine's College, Cambridge. He is the author of several novels, including Ripley Bogle (1989), which won the Hughes Prize, a Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, the Irish Book Award, and the Betty Trask Prize; Manfred's Pain (1992); and Eureka Street (1996), which won the Belfast Arts Award for Literature. He also co-authored The Dispossessed (1992) with Donovan Wylie, a non-fiction book about poverty.

In 2003, Robert McLiam Wilson was named by Granta magazine as one of the 20 'Best of Young British Novelists', despite not publishing new work in English since 1996.