Born in Wisconsin, Schreiber attended Stanford University, where he received his Bachelor, then earned an Master of Arts at the University of Toronto and a Doctor of Philosophy at Brandeis University where he studied with the poet J.V. Cunningham.
He is the author of four books of verse, two books of verse translation and one book of literary criticism. He is a recipient of the Carey Thomas Award for creative publishing. Although he taught for brief periods at Tufts University and Lowell Technological Institute (now the University of Massachusetts Lowell), he spent most of his life as a researcher in the social sciences (founding the Social Science Research Institute) and a software entrepreneur (founding MicroSolve Corporation).
As a poet, Schreiber has written mainly in traditional forms.
Though most of his verse consists of short lyric poems, he is also known for sharp, satirical epigrams of the kind commonly associated with Cunningham, and he has produced a few longer works extending to some 150 lines. Beginning in 2004 Schreiber began writing for the on-line journal Contemporary Review, for which he produced numerous critical articles, some on individual poets, some on influential critics and scholars, and some on the development of the poetic canon.
Examples of his work appear in the on-line anthologies The Hypertexts and Poem Tree. Seven of his poems were set to music by Paul Alan Levi in a song cycle for tenor and piano called Zeno"s Arrow, which has been performed in Massachusetts and New New York
