Immanuel Mifsud was born in Malta in 1967, the youngest in a working class family of eight children.

He started writing poetry at age 16, when he co-founded the literary group Versarti. At that same age he began to work in experimental theatre groups, directing his own plays and later he directed plays by Chekhov, Dario Fo, Max Frisch, Federico Garcia Lorca, David Mamet, Harold Pinter and Alfred Buttigieg.

Immanuel Mifsud writes poetry and prose, and some of his works have been translated into various languages and published in various European countries and USA.

His 2002 short story collection L-Istejjer Strambi ta' Sara Sue Sammut (Sara Sue Sammut's Strange Stories) won the Malta National Literary Award. The same book was later nominated for the Premio Strega Europa. Mifsud's next collection of stories, Kimika (Chemistry) stirred a controversy for what was deemed as "pornographic literature". The Left leaning press lambasted the book for its "filth", while the leading Right leaning English newspaper never published reviews on this book. In 2008 Klabb Kotba Maltin published his most recent prose work, another short story collection, Stejjer li ma Kellhomx Jinkitbu (Stories Which Shouldn't Have Been Written).

Immanuel Mifsud writes also for children; his latest publication Orqod, Qalbi, Orqod (Sleep My Love, Sleep) being a collection of lullabies.

He has participated in a number of prestigious literature festivals, such as the Festival de Poesia de la Mediterrania (Palma de Mallorca), Dnevi Poezija in Vina (Medana, Slovenia), Terceti Trnovski (Ljubljana, Slovenia), Dni Poezie a Vina (Valtice, Czech Republic), and others. Some of his poems were published in eminent publications such as New European Poets (Graywolf Press), The Echoing Years (Waterford Institute of Technology), and In Our Own Words: A Generation Defining Itself (MWE), among others.

In 2011 Edizzjonijiet Emmadelezio published Bateau Noir, a collection of poems in a bilingual edition, with translations from Maltese into French by Nadia Mifsud and Catherine Camilleri.

On 12 October 2011 it was announced that Immanuel Mifsud won the European Prize for Literature, 2011, with his book Fl-Isem tal-Missier (u tal-Iben).