Agur Schiff was born in Tel Aviv in 1955 and is a graduate of St. Martin's School of Art in London, where he specialized in animation. He won critical acclaim as a filmmaker before turning to writing. His award-winning debut collection of short stories, Dying Animals and Bad Weather (1995), was followed by a second collection entitled Stories for Short Trips (1999) and three novels: Bad Habits (2004), What You Wished For (2007), and In the Sand (2010).

Schiff was awarded the Israel Prime Minister's Prize for literature in 2009.

He is a senior lecturer at the Bezalel Academy of Art & Design in Jerusalem and lives in Tel aviv with his wife and two children.