An only child born and raised in Syracuse, New York, Florey attended St. John the Baptist Academy from 1st-12th grades, and this parochial school experience would later inform her non-fiction writing. She has a Bachelors degree in English Literature from Boston University as well as a Masters degree from Syracuse University, also in English Literature. After college, she married and moved to New Haven, Connecticut, where her daughter Katherine was born. Florey has been a reporter, worked in a bookstore, written catalog copy, and done freelance editing. After she left New Haven, she lived in the Williamsburg/ Greenpoint section of Brooklyn for twelve years with her second husband, artist Ron Savage.. Currently, Florey and Savage live in an old house in the New Haven area, where Florey works long-distance as an editor for Muze, Inc. in New York City. and continues to write.

Her latest book, The Rise and Fall of Handwriting, is an exploration into the history of handwriting and a meditation on its modern function in the digital age. It was published by Melville House Publishing in January, 2009. Amy Tan has called it "[A] book every writer would love, a curio cabinet on the art and act of writing," and The Wall Street Journal praises it as "witty and readable."