Born in New York City, Magdalena Ball obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree in English Literature from City University of New York (CCNY), before moving to Oxford to study literature on a postgraduate level at Oxford University.
After briefly returning to the US, she migrated to Australia, where she still lives, and studied for an MBA from Charles Sturt University (Wagga, New South Wales)
Her short stories, reviews, articles and poetry have been published both in Australia and internationally. She has published three collections of poetry (Unmaking Atoms, Repulsion Thrust, and Quark Soup) and two novels (Sleep Before Evening and Black Cow). Ball runs the review website The Compulsive Reader.