Edgarian was born in New Britain, Connecticut and grew up in the Hartford area, primarily in West Hartford and Glastonbury. She attended Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, where she graduated cum laude, receiving the Kingsbury Prize and the Pamela Weidenman Prize in Art. She received her B.A. in English with High Honors from Stanford University in 1984.

She moved to San Francisco soon after college and worked as a freelance copywriter, speechwriter, and PR consultant for various high tech and retail companies, including Levi Strauss and the Mayfield Fund.

She entered the national literary scene with a high-profile debut novel Rise the Euphrates (1994). In its review The Washington Post cited Rise the Euphrates as “a book whose generosity of spirit, intelligence, humanity, and finally ambition are what literature ought to be and rarely is today...daring, heartbreaking, and affirmative, giving order and sense to our random lives.” The Miami Herald called the novel “a stunning debut” and Mademoiselle magazine called Edgarian’s writing “so good it can raise the hairs on your neck.”

Among her other works of fiction and non-fiction is The Writer’s Life: Intimate Thoughts on Work, Love, Inspiration, and Fame which she co-edited with Tom Jenks (Vintage).

In 2003 Edgarian co-founded Narrative Magazine. Narrative is a nonprofit dedicated to advancing the literary arts in the digital age, and publishes new fiction, nonfiction, poetry, essays, and features by both well-known authors, such as Tobias Wolff, Ann Beattie, and Joyce Carol Oates, and the best rising talents. Narrative was named by Esquire “the gold standard of online magazines.”

Edgarian’s most recent novel Three Stages of Amazement is to be published by Scribner in Spring 2011.