Kline is a graduate of Yale (B.A. in English), Cambridge University (M.A. in Literature), and the University of Virginia (M.F.A.), where she was a Henry Hoyns Fellow in Fiction Writing.

Kline is currently Writer-in-Residence at Fordham University, where she teaches graduate and undergraduate creative writing and literature. She also teaches in the Fordham-in-London program at the University of London, Heythrop College. She has taught literature and creative writing at Yale, NYU, the University of Virginia, and Drew University.

Kline is married to David Kline, who works at Showtime Networks in New York City. They live in Montclair, New Jersey with their three sons, Hayden, Will, and Eli, and spend as much time as possible with extended family on Mount Desert Island in Maine.

Novels

• Bird in Hand (2009)
• The Way Life Should Be (2007)
• Desire Lines (1999)
• Sweet Water (1994)

Non-fiction

• The Conversation Begins: Mothers and Daughters Talk about Living Feminism (1994), with her mother, Christina L. Baker.

As editor

• Child of Mine: Original Essays on Becoming a Mother (1997)
• Room to Grow: Twenty-Two Writers Encounter the Pleasures and Paradoxes of Raising Young Children (1999)
• Always Too Soon: Voices of Support for Those Who Have Lost Both Parents (2006), with Allison Gilbert
• About Face: Women Write about What They See When They Look in the Mirror (2008), with Anne Burt