Michael Anthony was born in Mayaro in 1932. He went to school there and later to the Junior Technical School, San Fernando. He worked as a moulder in an iron foundry at Pointe à Pierre, Trinidad, until he went to England in 1955, where he worked in factories, for the railways and as a telegraphist. Before the publication of his first novel in 1963, The Games Were Coming, he was already known as a contributor of stories to the West Indian Literary Magazine, BIM.