A native of Guthrie, Oklahoma, he graduated from high school there and attended the nearby University of Central Oklahoma (at the time known as Central State University), where he took at B.A. in English and an M.A. in English, with an emphasis on Creative Studies; he wrote a novel for his thesis.

To support himself through college, he worked as a newspaper reporter and editor on his hometown daily. He spent ten years as a newspaper journalist, including a stint on the Tulsa World.

He worked in politics as well, serving as Reading Clerk and as a press aide for the Oklahoma State Senate and was a voter education consultant for the Oklahoma State Election Board, which was affiliated with the State Senate. He also managed two political campaigns.

In the late 1980s, he relocated to Central Texas. After successfully selling freelance articles to Sports Illustrated, Outside and other magazines, including a stint as a contributing editor for Oklahoma Today, he began a 15-year freelance affiliation with the Dallas Morning News, contributing criticism and occasionally columns and feature stories. He later was published in GQ Magazine.

To support his writing career, he worked at a variety of day-jobs, including as a college English instructor, trade magazine editor, and technical writer. Eventually he became a successful manager at an international high tech company, National Instruments, focusing on technical documentation and product localization.

In 2002, Crown, an imprint of Random House, published his first book, Backyard Brawl, which explored the University of Texas-Texas A&M University football rivalry while examining cultural evolution in modern Texas. Both historical and anecdotal, the book captures both the Texan love of football, and the context from which this love arises.

Two years later, Harcourt published his memoir, Chasing the Rodeo, a multifaceted history of rodeo that also traces the life and origins of his runaway birth father, who was a rodeo cowboy in the 1950s and 60s.

Also in 2004, the University of Texas Press published Splendor in the Short Grass: A Grover Lewis Reader, the first comprehensive collection of Texas cult writer Lewis's work. Stratton co-edited that book with his close friend Jan Reid, a novelist, nonfiction author, and longtime contributor to Texas Monthly and other magazines.

In his mid-40s, Stratton began training earnestly as a white-collar boxer at R. Lord's Gym in Austin, and this would influence his future writing projects. In 2006, he received contracts for his next two books. The first, to be published by the University of Texas Press, is a collaboration with pioneering female boxer Anissa Zamarron dealing with her successful recovery from psychological problems and her subsequent winning of two world boxing titles. The second project is the first comprehensive biography of two-time world heavyweight boxing champion Floyd Patterson, tentatively titled The Burdens of Floyd Patterson. It will be published by Harcourt.