Ernesto Javier Martínez was raised in Oakland, California and Jalisco, México. He is the queer son of an immigrant Mexican father and an island-born, Bay Area raised Puerto Rican mother. He studied literature at Stanford and Cornell, becoming a university professor at the age of 28. He has published three academic books: On Making Sense: Queer Race Narratives of Intelligibility (Stanford UP), Gay Latino Studies: A Critical Reader, edited with Michael Hames-García (Duke UP), and The Truly Diverse Faculty: New Dialogues in American Higher Education, edited with Stephanie Fryberg (Palgrave Press). 

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Ernesto pivoted toward artistic work when he collaborated with San Francisco-based illustrator Maya Christina Gonzalez, authoring Cuando Amamos Cantamos/When We Love Someone, We Sing to Them, the first bilingual children’s book published in North America about a boy who loves a boy. This book earned two International Latino Book Awards and was selected for the American Library Association's “Rainbow Book List." He began working as a screenwriter and filmmaker when he collaborated with Los Angeles-based Director Adelina Anthony, writing and producing his first short film, La Serenata, winner of 11 best film awards and distributed by HBO Max. He went on to become a Sesame Workshop Writer's Room Fellow, apprenticing in children's educational television and eventually writing for shows like Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood, Sesame Street, and Lyla in the Loop. He is best known for co-writing, with Jill Turner, the animated kids’ movie Daniel Visits a New Neighborhood: The Movie (PBS Kids), which introduces a new Latinx family to the Emmy award-winning Daniel Tiger franchise and explores friendship between boys. The movie reached over 2 million people in its initial TV broadcast, and over the course of three weeks, streaming of the film totaled over 15 million. It was the highest rated “tentpole” film among kids 2-8, since March of 2020, for PBS Kids. Ernesto is currently working with Adelina Anthony on his first indie feature film, which is currently in postproduction. 

Ernesto is the recipient of the national Lambda Literary Award, the Imagen Award (commonly known as the "Latin Golden Globes"), the HBO Latinx Film Competition Award, two International Latino Book Awards, and the NALAC Artist Grant. At the University of Oregon, he has received the Provost's Faculty Excellence Award, the UO Foundation Trustee Excellence Award, and the Collegiate Faculty Award (the highest honor bestowed to faculty by the College of Arts and Sciences). He is also the recipient of fellowships from the Ford Foundation, the Institute for Citizens and Scholars, the Mellon Foundation, and the National Association for Latino Independent Producers (NALIP). 

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Ernesto lives in Eugene, Oregon, where he works as Associate Professor and Department Head of Indigenous, Race, and Ethnic Studies (IRES) at the University of Oregon.