Joshua Clover was born in Berkeley, California. His birth name was Joshua Miller Kaplan; via legal change, he took his mother's maiden name. His mother, Carol J. Clover, Ph.D., is the originator of the final girl theory and a professor emerita at the University of California at Berkeley.

Clover graduated at Boston University and at the Iowa Writer's Workshop, He is an Associate Professor of English Literature and Critical Theory at the University of California, Davis, and was the distinguished Holloway poet-in-residence at the University of California, Berkeley in 1999-2000.

He is a frequent contributor to the Village Voice, writes for The New York Times, and is a former senior writer for Spin. His film criticism includes a book on The Matrix for the British Film Institute, and the Criterion Collection essays for Band of Outsiders and Straw Dogs.

Under the pseudonym "Jane Dark", Clover has written a number of film and music reviews for The Village Voice, and maintains a blog entitled "jane dark's sugarhigh!"

He has appeared in three editions of Best American Poetry, is a two-time winner of the Pushcart Prize, and recipient of an individual grant from the NEA; his first book of poetry, Madonna anno domini, received the Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets. His second book of poems is The Totality for Kids.