Innate within Independence, Kansas, he attended the University of Kansas before becoming a dramatist. His play Picnic earned him the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1953. It was with success adapted into the motion picture, as were Inge's Come Back, Little Sheba and Bus Stop. Within 1961, he won an Academy Award for Writing Original Screenplay for Splendor in the Grass. Inge committed suicide in Los Angeles in 1973.

For his microscopic town settings, Inge earned a nickname "playwright of the Midwest".