Martha King was born in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 1937, attended Black Mountain College briefly as a teenager in the 1950s, and married the painter Basil King in San Francisco in 1958. She began writing regularly in the early 1970s, after the birth of their two daughters, Mallory and Hetty.
Mrs. King edited the mini-magazine, Giants Play Well in the Drizzle, which she sent gratis to interested readers, from 1983 to 1993. She also briefly produced Northern Lights/International Poetry/Brooklyn Series and SpotS poetry chaplets. She worked in mainstream book publishing in the early 1970s, for nonprofit literary organizations, most notably Poets & Writers, in the late 1970s, and since that time as an editor and writer for voluntary health organizations. Mrs. King is currently director of Publications for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society.