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Tony Ardizzone was born and raised on the North Side of Chicago. He attended grammar school at Saint Gregory the Great parish, where he served as an altar boy and harbored hopes of someday becoming a priest, and then went to Saint George High School, where the Christian Brothers dispelled all notions that he was worthy. In 1971 he graduated with a B.A. with Honors from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, though his degree was not formally released until two years later due to court proceedings arising from his involvement in a peaceful, nonviolent anti-war protest and subsequent arrest as one of the so-called "Champaign 39." In 1975 he received a Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing, Fiction, from Bowling Green State University in Ohio. He also did a year of graduate study in English at the University of Illinois at Chicago in 1973. He is the author of six books of fiction and has edited four anthologies:

The Whale Chaser (novel). Recently completed.

The Habit of Art: Best Stories from the Indiana University Fiction Workshop (anthology). Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005.

In the Garden of Papa Santuzzu (novel). New York: Picador USA/St. Martin's Press, 1999 (hardcover); trade paperback edition 2000.

Taking It Home: Stories from the Neighborhood. Urbana and Chicago: The University of Illinois Press, 1996. Finalist for the Paterson Fiction Prize.

Larabi's Ox: Stories of Morocco. Minneapolis: Milkweed Editions, 1992. Awarded the Milkweed National Fiction Prize, the Chicago Foundation for Literature Award for Fiction sponsored by the Friends of Literature, and a Pushcart Prize.

The Evening News: Stories. Athens and London: University of Georgia Press, 1986. Awarded the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction.

Heart of the Order (novel). New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1986. Awarded the Virginia Prize for Fiction, and named one of the 10 Best Sports Books 1986 by The National Sports Review.

Intro 12 (anthology of fiction and poetry). Norfolk: Associated Writing Programs, 1981.

Intro 11 (anthology of fiction and poetry). Norfolk: Associated Writing Programs, 1980.

Intro 10 (anthology of fiction and poetry). New York: Hendel & Reinke, 1979.

In the Name of the Father (novel). Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, 1978.

Ardizzone's short stories and occasional personal essays have appeared in over forty literary magazines and have received the Pushcart Prize, the Lawrence Foundation Award, the Bruno Arcudi Literature Prize, the Prairie Schooner Readers' Choice Award, the Black Warrior Review Literary Award in Fiction, the Cream City Review Editors' Award in Nonfiction, and several citations in the annual anthologies Best American Short Stories and The Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses. In 1985 and 1990 he was awarded individual artist fellowships in fiction from the National Endowment for the Arts.

His short stories have also been selected for inclusion in several anthologies (partial list):

• Wildest Dreams: The Best of Italian Americana. Bronx, New York: Fordham University Press, forthcoming 2008.
• Twenty Years in Utopia: An Anthology of RopeWalk Writers. Evansville: University of Southern Indiana Press, forthcoming 2008.
• Sweet Lemons: Writings with a Sicilian Accent. New York: Legas Books: 2004.
• The Portable Italian American: A Collection of Outstanding Fiction, Memoirs, Journalism, Essays, and Poetry. New York: William Morrow & Company, 2003.
• Don't Tell Mama! The Penguin Anthology of Italian American Writing. New York: Penguin Books, 2002.
• Best of Prairie Schooner: Fiction and Poetry. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001.
• From the Margin: Writings in Italian Americana. Lafayette: Purdue University Press, revised edition, 2001.
• Smokestacks & Skyscrapers: An Anthology of Chicago Writing. Chicago: Wild Onion Books/Loyola Press, 1999.
• Identity Lessons: Contemporary Writing about Learning to be American. New York: Penguin Books, 1999.
• Fiction: An Introduction to the Short Story. Chicago: NTC/Contemporary Publishing Group, 1999.
• Fiction: The Elements of the Story Story. Chicago: NTC/Contemporary Publishing Group, 1999.
• New Worlds of Literature: Writings from America's Many Cultures. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2nd edition, 1994.
• Bless Me Father: Stories of Catholic Childhood. New York: Plume/Penguin Books, 1994.
• The Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses. Wainscott, New York: The Pushcart Press, 1993; paperback edition, New York: Touchstone/Simon & Schuster, Inc., 1994.
• Hear My Voice: A Multicultural Anthology of Literature from the United States. New York: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1993.
• Sarajevo: An Anthology for Bosnian Relief. Elgin, Illinois: Elgin Community College Press, 1993.
• The Flannery O'Connor Award: Selected Stories. Athens and London: University of Georgia Press, 1992; paperback edition, 1993.
• West Side Stories. Chicago: City Stoop Press, 1992.
• From the Margin: Writings in Italian Americana. Lafayette: Purdue University Press, 1991; paperback edition, 1992.
• New Chicago Stories. Chicago: City Stoop Press, 1990.
• New Worlds of Literature. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1989.

Ardizzone has written book reviews over a three-year period for the Virginian Pilot and Ledger Star, coordinated several week-long annual campus literary festivals, served as a Board Member of the City of Norfolk Commission on the Arts and Humanities, and worked with various writers organizations including PEN South and two terms (1983-87 and 1989-92) on the Board of Directors of the Associated Writing Programs. In 1989 he revived AWP's Intro intitiative and founded the AWP Intro Journals Project, serving as the series' Managing Editor until 1991.

He has taught at Saint Mary's Center for Learning (Chicago), Bowling Green State University, Old Dominion University, the M.F.A. in Creative Writing Program at Vermont College of Norwich University, and Indiana University, Bloomington. In 1979 he founded Old Dominion University's creative writing program, and for eight years served as its program director and frequent director of its annual week-long literary festival. He is currently Chancellor's Professor of English at Indiana University, Bloomington, where he teaches courses in creative writing, ethnic American fiction, 20th century American fiction, and literary interpretation, and where he has served as administrative consultant to the Indiana Review (1989-94) and Director of the M.F.A. in Creative Writing Program (1996-98 and 2002-05). He is also the recipient of the Tracy M. Sonneborn Award, awarded annually to an Indiana University faculty member for exemplary research and teaching. His Sonneborn lecture, "The Germ of the Story: Process and Metaphor in the Writing of Fiction," delivered on 2 May 2005, is available for viewing courtesy of IU Broadcasting.

In 1985 Ardizzone taught at Mohammed V University in Rabat, Morocco, as part of a faculty exchange sponsored by the United States Information Agency. While in Morocco he lectured on the craft of fiction and also gave readings and lectures at universities in Casablanca and Fez. He returned to Morocco during the summer of 1988 for further travel and research for his interconnected short story collection Larabi's Ox. In the fall of 1988 he participated in an American Studies Conference in Dubrovnik, Croatia, where he lectured on the role of baseball in American culture and gave readings from his baseball novel Heart of the Order. More recently he has traveled to Rome, Italy, for research on a book of interconnected short stories set there. Since 1975 Ardizzone has conducted writing workshops and given fiction readings and lectures on the craft of writing and related literary topics at dozens of North American colleges and universities.