Bawer was born in New York City, the son of Theodore Bawer, M.D., a writer, and medical editor whose Roman Catholic, Polish-speaking parents had immigrated to America during World War One from what was then the Austrian Empire; his mother was born in Florence, South Carolina, to Methodist and Baptist parents.

He grew up mostly in Queens, attending High School in Elmhurst. He was an undergraduate and then a graduate student at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, Long Island, where I earned a B.A, M.A., and Ph.D. in English and taught courses in literature and composition.

Between 1983 and 1993, Bawer contributed literary criticism and essays to vatious newspapers. His poems have been published in several periodicals. He also wrote several books. The Middle Generation appeared in 1987 and was chosen by the American Library Association as an "Academic Book of the Year". In the same year he published The Contemporary Stylist, an English grammar.

His collections include Diminishing Fictions, a book of essays on American fiction; The Aspect of Eternity, which focuses on the modern novel; Prophets and Professors, a study of poetry; and The Screenplay's the Thing, a gathering of my film reviews. Coast to Coast, a volume of poetry, came out in 1993 and was named by the Dictionary of Literary Biography Yearbook as the year's best first book of poems.

Bawer also published in 1993 was A Place at the Table; The Gay Individual in American Society. The book was widely discussed and written about, and was selected as a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. One of its many consequences was a five-year stint (1994 - 1999) as columnist for the gay newsmagazine The Advocate.

He also wrote two additional books on gay topics: Beyond Queer, an anthology of essay, and House and Home, in which Congressman Steve Gunderson (R.-Wis.) and his partner, Rob Morris, tell the story of their life together. In 1997 published Stealing Jesus: How Fundamentalism Betrays Christianity. All four of these books became #1 bestsellers in gay bookstores and three of them were nominated for the Lambda Book Award.

In 1998 Bawer relocated with his partner from New York to Amsterdam in the Netherlands; in 1999 they moved on to Oslo, Norway, where they still live today.