Barry Hines was born in the mining village of Hoyland Common near Barnsley on 30th June 1939, and attended Ecclesfield Grammar School. One of his proudest moments was playing for the England Secondary Schools football team in 1957. He worked for the National Coal Board as an apprentice mining engineer, but returned to education, eventually gaining a teaching qualification at Loughborough University. He worked as a Physical Education teacher for several years, first in London and then in Hoyland Common, eventually leaving to become a full-time writer.

His best known work is the novel A Kestrel for a Knave, which was made into the film Kes, directed by Ken Loach. It is the story of Billy Casper, a young boy from a mining village who cared for a kestrel. Other notable works include the film Looks and Smiles, also directed by Ken Loach, which won the Best Contemporary Screenplay award at the Cannes Film Festival in 1981, and the television film Threads, about Sheffield during and after a nuclear war, which won a special award at the Monte Carlo Television Festival in 1985 as well as the Broadcasting Press Guild Award and seven BAFTA nominations. The collection includes drafts for many other works, both published/produced such as The Gamekeeper, The Heart of It and The Price of Coal, and unpublished such as After the Strike, Slate and Tom Kite.

Barry Hines was Yorkshire Arts Fellow in Creative Writing in the University of Sheffield from 1972 to 1974, and became an Honorary Doctor of Letters in 2010.

Barry Hines died in March 2016.