Born in Masatepe in 1942, he published his first book, Cuentos, in 1963. He received his law degree from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Nicaragua of León in 1964, where he obtained the Gold Medal for being the best student.

Ramírez began his literary career as a short story writer. His first story, “The student”, was published in 1960 in Ventana, a magazine in León. His first book, published three years later, was just a collection of stories, but the following, published in 1970, was a full-length novel. Since then, he has alternated these genres with essays and journalism. His international breakthrough came in 1998 when he won the Alfaguara Prize with his novel Margarita, How Beautiful the Sea.

He married his wife, Gertrudis “Tulita” Guerrero Mayorga, in 1964. He has three children: Sergio, María , and Dorel and eight grandchildren.

In 1977 Ramírez became head of the “Group of Twelve”, a group of prominent intellectuals, priests, businesspeople, and members of civil society who publicly stated their support for the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN) in its struggle to topple the Presidency of Anastasio Somoza Debayle. With the triumph of the Revolution in 1979, he became part of the Junta of the Government of National Reconstruction, where he presided over the National Council of Education. He was elected vice-president of Nicaragua in 1984 and was sworn in 1985.

Though the FSLN lost power to the UNO coalition headed by Violeta Barrios de Chamorro in 1990, Ramírez continued to serve as the leader of the Sandinista block in the National Assembly until 1995, when he founded the Movimiento de Renovación Sandinista (MRS) because of his differences with other leaders of the FSLN, such as former president Daniel Ortega, on issues of democratic reform. He has since become retrospectively critical of certain Sandinista policies that he views as having turned the country against the FSLN.

In 1990, he founded La Quincena, a political journal based in Managua that would be published for ten years. He is presently a columnist for La Prensa as well as several newspapers around the world, including El País, La Jornada, El Nacional, El Tiempo and La Opinión. He is also the Director of Carátula, a Central American cultural e-magazine.

He made an unsuccessful bid for president on the MRS ticket in 1996. Since then, Ramírez has retired definitively from politics and his literary work has gained international recognition and his novels have been translated into several languages. He recently won the “Carlos Fuentes” prize, awarded by Mexico, in recognition for his life long work. He currently lives in Managua but travels extensively because of his many commitments as a writer.

In January 2000, he was awarded the first “José María Arguedas Narrative Prize” from the Casa de las Américas. He has taught at the University of Maryland from 1999 to 2000 and again in 2001, and has been visiting professor at various major universities in the United States and Europe. He is also the President of Centroamérica cuenta [es], the most important literary festival in the region.

Ramírez participated in the Stock Exchange of Visions project in 2007.

On November 16, 2017, Ramírez won the Spanish Ministry of Culture’s Cervantes Prize, the most prestigious literary prize in the Spanish-speaking world.