In his twenties, Saunders considered himself an Objectivist, but is now repulsed by the philosophy, comparing it to neoconservative thinking. From 1989 to 1996 he worked for Radian International, an environmental engineering firm in Rochester, New York as a technical writer and geophysical engineer. He also worked for a time in Sumatra with an oil exploration crew. Since 1997, Saunders has been on the faculty of Syracuse University, teaching creative writing in the school's MFA program. In 2006, Saunders was awarded a $500,000 MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, commonly called a "genius grant". In the same year he was also awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. Saunders currently resides in Syracuse, New York. He is married and has two daughters. He was a Visiting Writer at Wesleyan University and Hope College in 2010, and participated in Wesleyan's Distinguished Writers Series and Hope's Visiting Writers Series. His most recent book, a collection of recent non-fiction entitled
The Braindead Megaphone, was published on September 4, 2007.
While promoting ''The Braindead Megaphone'', Saunders appeared on [[The Colbert Report]] and [[Late Night with David Letterman]].
Saunders' fiction often focuses on the absurdity of consumerism and corporate culture and the role of the mass media. While many reviewers are quick to mention the satirical tone in most of Saunders' writing, many of these same works also deal with philosophical questions of morality. The tragicomic element, concurrently devastating and wildly funny, has earned Saunders comparisons to Kurt Vonnegut, a writer to whom Saunders has acknowledged a debt.
The film rights to
CivilWarLand in Bad Decline were purchased by Ben Stiller in the late 1990s and a film has been rumored to be in the works for several years now, to be produced by Stiller's company, Red Hour Productions. Saunders has also written a feature-length screenplay for one of his stories from
Pastoralia, 'Sea Oak'.