Early in Brite's career, she was best known for writing gothic and horror novels and short stories. Her trademarks have included using gay men as main characters, graphic sexual descriptions in the works, and an often wry treatment of gruesome events. Some of her better known novels include Lost Souls (1992), Drawing Blood (originally titled Birdland) (1993), and Exquisite Corpse (1996); she has also released short fiction collections: Swamp Foetus (also published as Wormwood, 1993), Are You Loathsome Tonight? (also published as Self-Made Man, 1998), Wrong Things (with Caitlin R. Kiernan, 2001), and The Devil You Know (2003). Brite's "Calcutta: Lord of Nerves" was selected to represent the year 1992 in the story collection The Century's Best Horror Fiction.

She has also written a biography about singer Courtney Love (1996) that was officially "unauthorized", but Brite tends to acknowledge that the work was done at Love's suggestion and with her cooperation.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s Brite has moved away from horror fiction and gothic themes while still writing about gay characters. Her critically acclaimed Liquor novels...Liquor (2004), Prime (2005), and Soul Kitchen (2006)...are dark comedies set in the New Orleans restaurant world.The Value of X (2002) depicts the beginning of the careers of the protagonists of the Liquor series ... Gary "G-Man" Stubbs and John "Rickey" Rickey; other stories, including several in her most recent collection The Devil You Know and the novella D*U*C*K, chronicle events in the lives of the extended Stubbs family, a Catholic clan whose roots are sunk deep in the traditional culture of New Orleans. Brite hopes to eventually write three more novels in the Liquor series, tentatively titled Dead Shrimp Blues, Hurricane Stew, and Double Shot. However, in late 2006 she severed her relationship with Three Rivers Press, the trade paperback division of Random House that published the first three Liquor novels, and is currently taking a hiatus from fiction writing. She has described Antediluvian Tales, a short story collection published by Subterranean Press in November 2007, as "if not my last book ever, then my last one for some time." She is still writing short nonfiction pieces, including guest editorials for the New Orleans Times-Picayune and a food article for Chile Pepper Magazine.

Brite has often stated that, while she will allow some of her work to be optioned for film under the right circumstances, she has little interest in movies and is not overly eager to see her work filmed. In 1999, her short story "The Sixth Sentinel" (filmed as The Dream Sentinel) comprised one segment of episode 209 of The Hunger, a short-lived horror anthology series on Showtime. Of all her books, only Exquisite Corpse is currently under option, by producer Simon Rumley.

A critical essay on Brite's fiction appears in The Evolution of the Weird Tale (2004) by S. T. Joshi.

Assigned female at birth, Brite has written and talked much about her gender dysphoria/gender identity issues. She self-identifies with gay males, and as of August 2010, has begun the long and often controversial process of gender reassignment. Brite has written that, while gender theorists like Kate Bornstein would call her a "nonoperative transsexual", Brite herself would not insist on a pedantic label, writing "I'm just me".

She lived in Chapel Hill, North Carolina and Athens, Georgia prior to returning to New Orleans in 1993. She is a fan of UNC basketball, but says her greatest support is for her hometown football team, the New Orleans Saints.

Brite is married to Chris DeBarr, who is a chef at The Green Goddess. They have a de facto cat rescue that houses between 15 and 20 cats, and sometimes also dogs.

During Hurricane Katrina and the failure of the federal levee system in 2005, Brite at first opted to stay at home, but she eventually relocated away to her mother's home in Mississippi. She used her blog to update her fans regarding the situation, including the unknown status of her house and many of her pets, and in October 2005 became one of the first 70,000 New Orleanians to begin repopulating the city.

In the following months, Brite has been an outspoken and sometimes harsh critic of those who are leaving New Orleans for good. She was quoted in The New York Times and elsewhere as saying, in reference to those considering leaving, "If you’re ever lucky enough to belong somewhere, if a place takes you in and you take it into yourself, you don't desert it just because it can kill you. There are things more valuable than life."

On August 30, 2008, as Hurricane Gustav approached the city, Brite and DeBarr both elected to remain in New Orleans and not evacuate. They survived the ordeal unharmed and with minimal damage to their home and property.

On January 6, 2009, Brite was arrested at Our Lady of Good Counsel Church in New Orleans as part of a peaceable demonstration in which churches in the Uptown area of the city were occupied to protest their closings. In August of 2009 New Orleans' Gambit Weekly publication published reader-poll results naming Brite in second place as an ever-popular "Best Local Author."

On June 9, 2010, Brite officially stated that she was retired in a post entitled 'I'm Basically Retired (For Now)' on her Livejournal. She stated that she had 'completely lost the ability to interact with her body of work,' then went on to state that business issues were in part a cause of this issue. Along with this, she specifically mentioned being unable to disconnect with aspects of her life relating to Hurricane Katrina. She ended her statement by saying that she missed having relationships with her characters and that she did not feel the need to write for publication.

Novels and novellas

• Lost Souls (1992)
• Drawing Blood (1993)
• Exquisite Corpse (1996)
• The Crow: The Lazarus Heart (1998)
• Plastic Jesus (novella; 2000)
• The Value of X (2002)
• Liquor (2004)
• Triads (2004) (with Christa Faust)
• Prime (2005)
• Soul Kitchen (2006)
• D*U*C*K (novella; 2007)

Short story collections

• Wormwood (also published in limited edition and in the UK under author's original title as Swamp Foetus; 1993)
• Are You Loathsome Tonight? (also published in the UK as Self-Made Man; 1998)
• Wrong Things (with Caitlin R. Kiernan; 2001)
• The Devil You Know (2003)
• Antediluvian Tales (2007)

Anthologies (as editor)

• Love in Vein
• Twice Bitten

Short stories

N.B.: These were originally published as chapbooks.

• "R.I.P." (1998)
• "The Seed of Lost Souls" (1999)
• "Stay Awake" (2000)
• "Lantern Marsh" (2000) (first published in October Dreams)
• "Would You?" (2000)
• "Pansu" (2001)
• "Con Party at Hotel California" (2002)
• "The Feast of St. Rosalie" (2003)
• "Used Stories" (2004)
• "Crown of Thorns" (2005)
• "Liquor for Christmas" (2007)
• "The H.O.G. Syndrome" (Brite's first "novel", about 9000 words, written at age 12; 2007)

Nonfiction

• The Real Story (biography, 1997)
• Guilty But Insane (essays, 2001)

Uncollected short fiction

• "The Freaks " (The Spook #12, 2002; also appears on Brite's website along with other early/unpublished fiction)
• "Fuck It, We're Going To Jamaica!" (webzine Necromantic; also appears on Brite's website)
• "The Curious Case of Miss Violet Stone " (co-written with David Ferguson; Shadows Over Baker Street, 2003; Ballantine Books)
• "Wandering the Borderlands" (Masques V, 2006; Gauntlet Press)

Interviews

• Interview on Bookslut.com
• Interview on zulkey.com
• Interview on Brew City Magazine
• Interview on wotmania.com
• Video interview at AuthorViews.com about her book "Liquor"
• Village Voice interview on Carnival 2005

Poppy Z. BritePoppy Z. BritePoppy Z. Brite?????, ????? ???Poppy Z. Brite