Block was born and raised in Summit, New Jersey. Brett Ellen Block received her undergraduate degree in Fine Arts from the University of Michigan, where she was awarded the Hopwood and Haugh Prizes for Fiction Writing. She went on to earn graduate degrees at the Iowa Writers' Workshop and the University of East Anglia's Fiction Writing Program.

Her debut collection of short stories, Destination Known, won the Drue Heinz Literary Prize, and she is a recipient of the Michener-Copernicus Fellowship. She is also the author of the critically acclaimed novel The Grave of God's Daughter and the Macavity Award-nominated thriller The Lightning Rule Writing under the name "Ellen Block" she penned the woman's fiction novel The Language of Sand.

She lives in Los Angeles.