Lynn Strongin was born in New York City in 1939. Her father Edward I. Strongin was a research psychologist, and her mother Marguerite (née Rosenblum) was an artist who studied with Alexander Archipenko. Strongin's younger sister, Martha Strongin Katz, was the founding violist of the Cleveland Quartet. During the war years, Strongin's father, then a psychologist working with injured and shell-shocked soldiers, was posted to numerous locations around the Eastern and Southern States. Strongin's mother, sister, and she lived in cities, isolated hamlets, on small hardscrabble farms - wherever would keep them close to her father.

Her family's travels through the South, when most establishments and neighbourhoods prided themselves on their "no negroes, no Jews" policy, affected her deeply, and explorations of those experiences are found throughout her work.

Strongin's parents divorced in 1949. In the summer of 1951, Strongin contracted polio at the age of twelve. After a brief stay in a New York hospital, she was moved to the New York State Rehabilitation Center at Haverstraw, New York, where she stayed in the children's ward for six months.

Upon her return home, her mother moved the family into an apartment in Manhattan. There, Strongin continued her schooling through the city's home-schooling program. She also studied piano while her sister studied the violin.

After graduating from high school, Strongin first studied composition with Vittorio Giannini at the Manhattan School of Music. When she found that music alone would not provide the expressive forms her creativity demanded, she transferred to Hunter College to study literature.

She graduated from Hunter cum laude in 1962, and, having won a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship, went to Stanford University where she obtained an M.A. in 1964.

After graduating from Stanford, Strongin taught at various post-secondary institutions in New York State and California. It was when she was teaching in the Berkeley/Oakland area, that she connected with writers such as Denise Levertov, Robert Duncan, Kay Boyle, Paul Mariah, and Josephine Miles.

In 1971, Strongin moved to Albuquerque to start her Doctoral studies at the University of New Mexico. In the same year, she received a National Endowment of the Arts (NEA) Creative Writing grant; her first book, The Dwarf Cycle, was published the next year.

From 1971 to 1979, Strongin lived, studied, and taught in Albuquerque. Her studies in 1977-78 were supported by an American Association of University Women (AAUW) Fellowship.

During her time in Albuquerque, her other six poetry books were published. The last book, Countrywoman/ Surgeon, was a candidate for the 1979 Elliston Award.

In 1979, Strongin moved to Canada for what was intended to be a short stay. She remained, and now lives in her adopted land, British Columbia, Canada.

Lynn is the author of "Spectral Freedom: Selected Poetry, Criticism, and Prose" which was released in August of 2009.