Kleeman was born in Berkeley, California, in 1986 to an American professor of religious studies and a Taiwanese teacher of Japanese literature.
In 2010 Kleeman's short story "Fairy Tale" was published in The Paris Review while she was in her first semester of her MFA program.
[12] Kleeman was the recipient of the 2016 Bard Fiction Prize for promising writers under the age of 40.
She has written for The New Yorker, Paris Review, Harper's, Vogue, Zoetrope, New York Times Magazine, and n+1, among others.
Kleeman is married to writer Alex Gilvarry and lives in Staten Island.