Born in Moscow, Russia to the family of Boris Grushin, a prominent Soviet sociologist, [1], she spent most of her childhood in Prague, Czechoslovakia[2]. She was educated at Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow State University, and Emory University. In 1989 she received a scholarship to Emory University, where she graduated summa cum laude in 1993. She was naturalized in 2002, but still keeps the Russian citizenship[3]. Grushin has worked as an interpreter for President Jimmy Carter, a cocktail waitress in a jazz bar, a translator at the World Bank, a research analyst at a Washington, DC law firm, and, most recently, an editor at Harvard University's Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection.
Her first novel, The Dream Life of Sukhanov written in English, was a New York Times Notable Book of 2006, won the 2007 New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award, as well as a Top Ten Books of 2006 choice by the Washington Post.