Scott Coffel was born in New York City, and educated at York College, a senior college of The City University of New York, and at SUNY-Oneonta. After several years in Seattle, Washington, he attended the Iowa Writers Workshop, receiving an MFA in 1995.

A resident of Iowa City, he directs the Hanson Center for Technical Communication in The University of Iowa’s College of Engineering.

His poems have appeared in Salmagundi, Ploughshares, Paris Review, Antioch Review, The American Scholar, The Southern Review, Barrow Street, The Missouri Review, The Wallace Stevens Journal, and elsewhere.

His first book of poetry, "Toucans in the Arctic," was published in 2009 by Etruscan Press.