Reisman received her M.F.A. from the MFA Program for Poets & Writers at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Her short story collection House Fires won the 1999 Iowa Short Fiction Award. Her novel The First Desire won the Samuel Goldberg & Sons Foundation Prize for Jewish Fiction. Reisman has also received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts. Reisman won an O. Henry Award and the Raymond Carver Short Story Award. Her book, The First Desire, was also named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year.

Her stories have been included in numerous anthologies, including Best American Short Stories, O. Henry Award Stories, and Jewish in America. Her work has also appeared in The Yale Review, The Kenyon Review, Tin House, Five Points, Michigan Quarterly Review, SubTropics, and other journals.