Quade was born to a white father and a Hispanic mother in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Her father was a desert geologist and her family lived throughout the Southwestern United States, as well as in Australia.^[2] She attended Phillips Exeter Academy and earned her BA from Stanford University and her MFA from the University of Oregon. From 2009 to 2011 she was a Wallace Stegner Fellow in the Creative Writing Program at Stanford University, where she also taught as a Jones Lecturer.^[3] In 2014–15, she was the Delbanco Visiting professor of Creative Writing at the University of Michigan. She is currently an assistant professor of creative writing at Princeton University^[4][5] and will be returning to Stanford University in the Fall 2023.

Quade's work has appeared in The New Yorker, Narrative Magazine,^[6] The Best American Short Stories, The O. Henry Prize Stories, and elsewhere.^[3] Her writing weaves together themes of family, race, class, and coming-of-age, and unfold in New Mexico landscapes inspired by the author's own upbringing.^[5]

Her debut short story collection, Night at the Fiestas, received critical praise and won awards. A review in The New York Times labeled her stories "legitimate masterpieces" and called the book a "haunting and beautiful debut story collection."^[7] The Five Wounds, her debut novel, was published in 2021.^[8] The novel was shortlisted for the 2022 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction.^[9]

• —— (2015). Night at the Fiestas: Stories. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 978-0-393-24298-0.
• —— (2021). The Five Wounds: A Novel. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 978-0-393-24283-6.

• KirstinValdezQuade.com - Official Website
• Kirstin Valdez Quade's faculty profile at the Lewis Center for the Arts
• Best Advice on writing at Narrative Magazine
• Night at the Fiestas, a book review at The New York Times
• Interview with Kirstin Valdez Quade at NPR