She is the author of A Day, A Night, Another Day, Summer, the novel Florida, a finalist for the 2004 National Book Award for Fiction, and Nightwork, a collection of short stories chosen by poet John Ashbery as the best book of 1996 for the Times Literary Supplement. Her most recent novel, All Souls, was published by Harcourt in spring of 2008 and was a 2009 Pulitzer finalist for fiction. She has twice won an O. Henry Award, as well as a Pushcart Prize, and is the recipient of a New York Foundation of the Arts fellowship.

Schutt lives in New York City and teaches at The Nightingale-Bamford School. she serves as the faculty adviser for the school literary magazine Philomel and The Book Club and is a full-time English teacher in the upper school in the fall semester. She has taught graduate and undergraduate writing at Barnard College, Bennington College, Columbia, Hollins University, Sarah Lawrence College, University of Massachusetts-Amherst, and U.C.-Irvine. She has twice taught at the Sewanee Summer Writers' Conference (2006, 2008).