Robert Rinehart was born in Mansfield, Ohio and raised in Sacramento, California. He earned both a Bachelor of Arts degree and a Master of Arts (emphasis: creative writing) in English from California State University, Sacramento. He studied with the poet Dennis Schmitz while at CSUS. He coached swimming, water polo, and diving for twenty-three years, attended night school at the University of Southern Maine (studying with renowned novelist Monica Wood), earned a PhD from University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, in kinesiology, and subsequently taught at the university level for twenty-six years. While keeping his "day job," he wrote fiction and poetry, publishing his first poem, "candlestick park," in 1983.

 

His fiction has appeared in Syncopation, Aethlon, and forthcoming in The Queens Review. Publications for poetry include Chelsea, Sonoma Mandala, tarot, Mayhem, Sky Island Review, and, forthcoming, North Dakota Quarterly. He and his partner now live in Raglan, Aotearoa New Zealand.​​