Darcey Steinke is the daughter of a Lutheran minister. She grew up in upstate New York; Connecticut; Philadelphia; and Roanoke, Virginia. She is a graduate of Cave Spring High School, Goucher College, and the University of Virginia, where she received a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing. She also completed a Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University. Steinke teaches creative writing at Princeton University, the American University of Paris, and in the graduate programs at New School University and Columbia University. She previously taught at the University of Mississippi, where she was a writer-in-residence, and at Barnard College. Steinke lives in Brooklyn with her husband, the investigative journalist Michael Hudson, and her daughter Abbie.
