Nickolas Butler was born in Allentown, Pennsylvania, raised in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, and was educated at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (BA, Honors English – 2002) and the University of Iowa Writers Workshop (MFA, Fiction – 2012). He is the recipient of the 2010 Roark Prize in Poetry, the 2007 Davis Demitasse Poetry Award, and a runner-up in the 2009 Wisconsin People & Ideas Poetry Contest. He has also been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.
His first novel, Shotgun Lovesongs, was published in March 2014 and received rave reviews. At the heart of the novel is a small Wisconsin town and a group of friends who share a past there. Although some have left the town to find success--or not--they all feel an almost magnetic pull to this place and each other. A New York Times review called the work a "big-hearted book" that is "impressively original."