Michael A. Burstein was born in New York City, and grew up in Forest Hills in the borough of Queens. He attended Hunter College High School in Manhattan and went on to Harvard College where he was a member of the Harvard-Radcliffe Science Fiction Association. He graduated Harvard in 1991 with a degree in Physics; in 1993 he earned a Master’s in Physics from Boston University. In 1994 Burstein attended the Clarion Workshop. In 1995 he studied comic book writing under Dennis O’Neil at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan.