Daphne Kalotay was born and raised in New Jersey and attended Vassar College, where she graduated with a BA in Psychology. In 1993, she moved to Massachusetts to attend Boston University's Creative Writing Program, where her stories went on to win the school's Florence Engel Randall Fiction Prize and a Transatlantic Review Award from The Henfield Foundation. She remained at BU to complete a PhD in modern and contemporary literature, writing her doctoral dissertation on the works of Mavis Gallant. Daphne has received fellowships from the Christopher Isherwood Foundation, the La Napoule Foundation, Yaddo and the MacDowell Colony, and is a grateful recipient of the W.K. Rose Fellowship in the Creative Arts from Vassar College. She has taught creative writing at Boston University and Middlebury College and is currently Visiting Writer-in-Residence at Skidmore College.