Warren Slesinger graduated from the Iowa Writers Workshop with an M.F.A., and taught English part-time while working full-time in the publishing business as an editor, marketing manager or sales manager at university presses in Chicago, Oregon, Pennsylvania and South Carolina.

He received an Ingram Merrill grant for writing (1971) and a South Carolina Poetry Fellowship (2003), and taught part-time at the University of South Carolina-Beaufort. He was awarded the Tony Quagliano International Poetry Award in 2016.

His poetry has been published in several literary magazines, e.g., The Georgia Review, South Carolina Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Iowa Review, Massachusetts Review, and New Letters.

He has been in residence at the Yaddo and MacDowell colonies for writers and Sitka Center for Study of the Arts and Ecology.