She was raised on a cattle ranch in a remote area of Phillips County, Montana, USA near Regina, Montana, south of Malta, Montana. In 1986 she moved with her three small children to Missoula, Montana to attend the University of Montana.

She later turned the tales of her ranch life into an award-winning memoir, titled Breaking Clean (Knopf 2002), which won Whiting Writers' Award., the PEN/Jerard Fund Award, Mountains and Plains Nonfiction Book Award, Willa Cather Literary Award, and was one of The New York Times' Notable Books. She received a Jacob K. Javits Graduate Fellowship and a Montana Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowship. Her essays and poems have appeared in such publications as The New York Times, Big Sky Journal and Oprah Magazine.

Blunt received her M.F.A. from the University of Montana in 1994. Blunt currently resides in Missoula, Montana where she is an associate professor at the University of Montana.