Born in Union County, Georgia in September 14, 1917, Reece began publishing poems locally while in high school, receiving his first widespread publication in 1943 with the publication of "Lest the Lonesome Bird" in the Prairie Schooner journal. Ballad of the Bones and Other Poems, collecting Reece's poetry, soon followed, in 1945. Reece was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for Bow Down in Jericho, his 1950 follow-up to that first, critically acclaimed publication. That same year, Reece published Better a Dinner of Herbs, his first novel. In 1952, he received a Guggenheim Fellowship for fiction. 1952 also saw a third volume of poetry, A Song of Joy, while 1955 brought his second novel, The Hawk and the Sun and his final volume of poetry, The Season of Flesh. On June 3, 1958, Reece committed suicide, responding to illness and depression.

The Georgia Writers Hall of Fame inducted Reece in 2001, and in 2003 a group of writers formed the Byron Herbert Reece Society. As of 2004, the Society was working on constructing a museum to the writer on the site of his family farm, which is owned by Union County. His life story is at the center of Georgia's state drama, The Reach of Song, which depicts life between World War I and World War II in the Appalachian Mountains.