Cara Blue Adams is the author of the interlinked story collection You Never Get It Back, which was a New York Times Editors' Choice and awarded the John Simmons Short Fiction Prize, judged by Brandon Taylor, who calls it "a modern classic." It was shortlisted for the Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction and longlisted for The Story Prize.

Over twenty-five of Adams' stories appear in magazines such as Granta, The Kenyon Review, American Short Fiction, The Missouri Review, The Mississippi Review, and Epoch, and her essays and criticism appear in The New Yorker and The Believer. She is a former co-editor of The Southern Review.

She is the recipient of the Center for Fiction Emerging Writers' Fellowship, the Kenyon Review Short Fiction Prize, the Missouri Review Peden Prize, and the Meringoff Prize in Fiction, as well as fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference and the Lighthouse Works.

She is an associate professor at Temple University and lives in Brooklyn and the Hudson Valley.