Yvonne Zipter was born in 1954 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Working class and sometimes only just barely scraping by, her family consequently saw the value of both education and a sense of humor, and she inherited those same values. Her love affair with books began at an early age—when she was four she harassed her mother to teach her to write her name in script so that she could get her own library card—but she hadn't thought about becoming a writer herself until college.

Her first published pieces were book reviews and short news reports for the gay press, but by 1985 she had started writing her column, at the urging of editor Tracy Baim, for Windy City Times and has been writing it ever since. "Inside Out," which has been in national syndication for about fifteen years, quickly evolved into a series of humorous musings on queer life and life generally with a distinctly queer focus; currently, "Inside Out" can also be found in the Philadelphia Gay News and Update (San Diego).

Her first book, Diamonds Are a Dyke's Best Friend, which was published by Firebrand Books in 1988, explores the enduring role of softball in the lesbian community. A softball player herself at the time, she eagerly approached the task of documenting this phenomenon when then-owner of Firebrand, Nancy Bereano, suggested the project to her.

Yvonne's next book, The Patience of Metal, is a collection of poetry that she self-published at the urging of her friends Minnie Bruce Pratt and Barbara Wilson. The Patience of Metal was a Lambda Literary Award Finalist, runner-up for the Poetry Society of America's Melville Cane Award, and a Chicago Book Clinic Honor Book.

In 1995, Yvonne completed an MFA in writing at Vermont College and in that same year, Ransacking the Closet, a collection of humorous essays, was published by Spinsters Ink.

Her poetry manuscript, As If the Night Could Heal Itself, was a finalist for the May Swenson Poetry Award in 2002, and she has recently completed a novel about lesbians in late-nineteenth-century Russia.

Yvonne's other job is working as a manuscript editor at the University of Chicago Press, and she has volunteered her editorial skills for various small nonprofit organizations. Of these volunteer endeavors, she is most proud of The Skinny: Greyhounds Only Newsletter, which, with the help of associate editor Barbara Karant and designer Julia Archer, has become a valued educational tool for those who have adopted retired racing dogs from Greyhounds Only, Inc., as well as other interested readers.

She lives with her partner Kathy Forde and their retired racing greyhounds Nacho and Yoko.