She came to the U.S. first as a foreign exchange student, and then went on to receive an M.A. and Ph.D. in English Literature from Columbia University. She taught at Bennington College, Saint Mary's College of California, the University of California, Berkeley, the University of Oregon, the University of Montana, and the University of Texas in Austin.

Ms Freed's short fiction, memoirs and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's, The Atlantic Monthly, Southwest Review, The Georgia Review, the Michigan Quarterly Review, Tin House, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Newsday, Mirabella, House Beautiful, House & Garden, and Vogue Magazine.

Her work is widely translated and anthologized, and has been listed in Best American Short Stories and in The O. Henry Award Prize Stories.

Ms. Freed is Professor of English at the University of California, Davis, and lives in Northern California.

In 2002, Ms. Freed received the inaugural Katherine Anne Porter Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She has also received fellowships, grants and support from the National Endowment for the Arts, The Guggenheim Foundation, The Rockefeller Foundation, and the Lannan Foundation. In 1986, she won the Bay Area Book Reviewers' Award for Fiction.