She was born Alice Elliott Kirby in Philadelphia and grew up in Bryn Mawr, Pa., where she attended the Shipley School. After that, she attended Kenyon College and the University of Pennsylvania, where she earned a BA in Chinese studies. She started out as a poet and earned an MA from the Antioch University program in London, producing a chapbook, This Is My Gun, Clyde, as her thesis.

The short story In the Gloaming was first published in The New Yorker in 1994 and was selected by John Updike for inclusion in the Best American Short Stories of the Century. Prior to that, it was included in The Best American Short Stories 1994, as selected by Tobias Wolff. In the Gloaming was made into an HBO film starring Glenn Close and directed by Christopher Reeve. The story had previously been adapted for television by Trinity Playhouse in another, more faithful and less glamorous version, directed by Helen Whitney.

Dark's short story "Watch the Animals," first published in Harper's Magazine, was subsequently awarded an O. Henry Award in 2000. She has also published stories in Doubletake, Book Magazine, Five Points, and Redbook. Her essays and reviews have appeared in publications such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Harper's Bazaar, and she is a frequent contributor of essays on a wide range of subjects to several anthologies.

Dark is the recipient of an NEA grant and has led workshops at the Writer's Voice in New York City, Bard College, Manhattanville College, and Rutgers University. She lives in New Jersey with her husband, Larry Dark, formerly the Series Editor for Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards and currently Director of The Story Prize, an annual book award for short story collections. She also has a son Asher Dark.

She is Writer in Residence at Rutgers-Newark University.

In the 1980s, Dark shared a Manhattan apartment with fashion designer Tom Ford.