Lawrence Michael Schoen was born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1959, though he grew up in Southern California. In 1983, he graduated from California State University, Northridge, with a B.S. in psycholinguistics. This degree was followed up by an M.S. and a Ph.D. in psychology, both from Kansas State University. Schoen put his doctorate to work as a professor, first at New College in Florida, then Lake Forest College in Illinois, and finally Chestnut Hill College in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. After a decade in academia he worked for 17 years as a director of research and analytics for a medical center which provides mental health and addiction treatment service works throughout Philadelphia.

In 1992, Schoen applied his background in linguistics to fandom, creating the Klingon Language Institute. The KLI is a nonprofit organization devoted to the study of the Klingon language and culture (from the Star Trek media franchise). The group has members from all over the world, from casual fans to serious linguistic scholars, and publishes a number of works in Klingon, including the Tao Tse Ching, plays of William Shakespeare, the Epic of Gilgamesh, The Wizard of Oz, and The Art of War. (Schoen himself published a Klingon translation of Shakespeare's Hamlet.) It also publishes a regular journal, HolQeD, an academic journal utilizing blind peer review, registered with the Library of Congress, and catalogued by the Modern Language Association.

Schoen is highly regarded as an author of science fiction and fantasy, starting with the publication of his first story, "Past Waves", in 1990. Since that, he has written over 10 novels, multiple chapbooks and poems, and many works of short fiction. He won the 2016 Kevin O'Donnell Jr. Service to the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Association of American Award, and has been nominated multiple times for the Nebula Award (in 2013 for the novella Barry's Tale, in 2014 for the novella Trial of the Century , in 2015 for the novella Calendrical Regression, in 2016 for his thoughtful and critically acclaimed novel Barsk: The Elephant's Graveyard, in 2018 for the novella Barry's Deal, and in 2019 for the novelette "The Rule of Three"). His 2010 short story "The Moment" was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Short Story, and he was twice nominated for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. Both Barsk and its sequel The Moons of Barsk won the Coyotl Award for Best Novel.

Schoen lives with his wife, Valerie, outside Philadelphia.