Eddie Roth came to fiction writing later in life. He received an M.A. in English from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville in 2023, where he won The Mimi Zanger Memorial Award in Fiction and William Carlin Slattery Memorial Award in Poetry or Drama.

He organized The Eddie Roth Reader in the summer of 2024 to share his writing with friends and interested acquaintances. He sees the Reader mainly as a platform for his short fiction. But it presents other forms, including a few of his old newspaper editorials and columns, an old speech, as well as occasional poetry, essays, and fragments.

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Eddie spent most of his working career practicing law, first in New York and then in St. Louis, his boyhood home. He graduated from New York University (1979) and Fordham Law School (1982).

​​Eddie clerked for Chief Judge Lawrence H. Cooke of the New York Court of Appeals (1982-1984), and was a litigation associate at the New York City firm of Debevoise & Plimpton (1985-1987). He engaged in  private law practice with firms in St. Louis for nearly 20 years (1987-2001, 2017-2021) during which he also served on the St. Louis Board of Police Commissioners (1998-2001), including as its president. He spent nearly ten years (2002-2011)working as a newspaper editorial writer at the Dayton Daily News and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.  He spent another six years (2011-2017) in St. Louis municipal government in the administration of Francis G. Slay, the city's longest serving mayor, as Director of Operations, Director of Public Safety and Director of Human Services. Most recently, Eddie worked in police section of the city's law department as an assistant city counselor (2021-2025). He retired in October 2025.

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Eddie has been married to Jeanne Philips-Roth, a legal aid lawyer, for more than 35 years. They live in a brick and stucco bungalow house in south St. Louis. They have three wonderful daughters, Emily, Julia and Alice.