Emily Barton was raised in New Jersey, and attended Harvard University and the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop. Her first novel, The Testament of Yves Gundron, was published in 2000 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. That novel was named a New York Times Book of the Year, and earned Barton a Michener-Copernicus Fellowship and the Bard Fiction Prize. Her second novel, Brookland, was published in the spring of 2006, also by Farrar, Straus and Giroux; the paperback was released by Picador in 2007 and was briefly a New York Times bestseller. "Brookland" was also named a New York Times Book of the Year, and one of the 25 best works of fiction and poetry of 2006 by the Los Angeles Times. Barton is the recipient of a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and a fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation for 2006-07. She reviews books for the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Bookforum, and other publications.

She is married to Thomas Hopkins, another Jewish American fiction writer. She is currently a writer in residence at Bard College.