Elmore Leonard became interested in writing in 1935, after reading a serialization of All Quiet on the Western Front in the Detroit Times. Touched by the story, he wrote a play based on the novel for his fifth-grade classroom, using the desks as "No-Man's-Land." In high school he wrote a story or two for the school paper but spent most of his time reading. After graduating in 1943 Leonard joined the navy and served with a Seabee unit in the South Pacific. He left the service in 1946 and enrolled at the University of Detroit. At the university he began writing again, entering short story contests and placing third in one of them. He graduated in 1950 with a major in English and philosophy.

In 1949, while still in college, Leonard joined the Campbell-Ewald advertising agency. He also began writing in earnest during this period. He had his first success in 1951 when Argosy magazine published his short story "Trail of the Apache." Other stories—all westerns—followed in such publications as Zane Grey Western and The Saturday Evening Post. In 1953 Leonard published his first novel, The Bounty Hunters, followed by four more over the next eight years.

As the market for westerns began to dry up, however, Leonard found himself writing educational films for Encyclopaedia Britannica, industrial films for corporations and advertising and sales material. He switched from westerns to crime with the publication of The Big Bounce. During the 1970s and 1980s he developed a devoted following with his novels Fifty-two Pickup, City Primeval, Stick and LaBrava. When Glitz was published in 1985, it became Leonard's "breakout" bestseller; he began to receive long-overdue attention, including a Newsweek cover story.

Three of Leonard's books have been nominated for the Edgar Allan Poe Award by the Mystery Writers of America: The Switch, nominated for Best Original Paperback Novel of 1978; Split Images, for Best Novel of 1981; and LaBrava, which won for Best Novel in 1983. Maximum Bob was also awarded the first annual International Association of Crime Writers' North American Hammett Prize in 1991. In 1992 the Mystery Writers gave Leonard the Grand Master Award, which "is presented only to individuals who, by a lifetime of achievement, have proved themselves preeminent in the craft of the mystery and dedicated to the advancement of the genre."

Elmore Leonard is the father of five children and the grandfather of nine. He and his wife live in a suburb of Detroit, Michigan.