Searle was born in Penn Wynne, Pennsylvania. Her father Bill is a Democratic Party activist and retired personnel director; Barbara, her mother, is a children's librarian. She has a younger sister, Kate, who works at MIT and Bill, her older brother, is a videographer.

Searle received a B.A. from Oberlin College and her Master's degree from Brown University. She was a special education teacher and taught students with autism in schools located in New Haven, Connecticut and Providence, Rhode Island.

In 1982, Searle's short story, "Missing LaDonna", appeared in Redbook. Although this was followed by stories placed in the South Carolina Review, the Indiana Review, The Greensboro Review, the Kenyon Review, Ploughshares and other journals, it was not until 1993 that her first book, My Body To You, was published. In 1992, it had been named winner of the Iowa Short Fiction Award by the Iowa Writers Workshop. James Salter, a novelist and screenwriter, who wrote The Hunters, Downhill Racer, The Appointment and others, acted as judge.

A Four Sided Bed, Searle's first novel, was published by Graywolf Press in 1998 and received positive reviews from Kirkus and Booklist.

A novella and collection of short stories entitled Celebrities in Disgrace was published in 2001. When discussing one of the themes of this collection during an interview with Post Road Magazine, Searle said, "I had a phrase in my mind, 'the witch of ambition,' and I do think there is this sort of dark force inside of people and any of those dark forces are hard to write about but they're the ones you want to write about...." Ambition and the search for attention seem to be the "...driving forces of our time."

"Celebrities in Disgrace," the title novella, was called a 'miniature masterpiece' by New York Times Book Review.

Tonya and Nancy:The Opera previewed at the Zero Arrow Theatre of the American Repertory Theatre in 2006, produced by Tufts Music. It was selected by Opera Vista as one of the three best new one-act operas of the year in 2007. In 2010, it was performed by Mixed Precipitation in a new production in Minneapolis and St. Paul.

A new expanded version of the opera, 'Tonya and Nancy: The Rock Opera' premiered in 2008, produced by Triangle Productions. It was reviewed as "brilliant and touching" in Portland Mercury and received widespread media attention described in The Oregonian. A future production is in the works for 2010.

Searle has taught creative writing at Brown University, Emerson College, the University of Southern Maine, Stonecoast MFA, Rutgers University, the University of Massachusetts, Boston and other institutions. She has been a member, officer and committee chairperson of the New England chapter of International PEN. In 1984, Searle married software developer John Hodgkinson; they have a son, Will and reside in Arlington, Massachusetts.

Novels

• A Four-Sided Bed (1998)

Story collections

• My Body To You (1993)
• Celebrities in Disgrace (2001)

As contributor or editor

• Don't You Forget About Me: Contemporary Writers on the Films of John Hughes (2007)
• The Darfur Anthology (2007)
• Now Write!:Fiction Writing Exercises from Today's Best Writers and Teachers (2006)
• Out of the Blue Writers Unite (2004)
• The Iowa Award: The Best Stories, 1991-2000 (2001)
• American Fiction, Volume Seven: The Best Unpublished Short Stories by Emerging Writers (1995)
• Breaking Up Is Hard to Do: Stories by Women (1994)
• The Time of Our Lives: Women Write on Sex After 40 (1993)