Her fiction, non-fiction, and poetry have appeared in, among other places, The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, Filmmaker, The Believer, Post Road, St. Ann's Review, Salt Hill, Hayden's Ferry Review, Five Chapters and Spinning Jenny - and her debut novel, The Long Haul ISBN 1932360069, was well-received[1] When she was a senior in high school, first at Nightingale-Bamford School and then at Friends Seminary,[2] Stern starred in an off-Broadway production of a play she co-wrote, at the now defunct Kaufmann Theater entitled “Sometimes I Wake Up in the Middle of the Night.”[2] From there she turned to film, working for Good Machine, Hal Hartley, Ang Lee and Terry Gilliam, and later as a comic, co-hosting the Lorne Michaels' comedy series, "This is Not a Test", alongside host, Marc Maron at Catch a Rising Star.

In 2003 Stern founded the highly acclaimed and popular The Happy Ending Music and Reading Series in 2003 out of a small Chinatown bar.

She has welcomed over 600 artists, including: Laurie Anderson, Aimee Mann, James Salter, Moby, A.M. Homes, Rick Moody, Amy Hempel, Mary Gaitskill, My Brightest Diamond and Mark Eitzel.

[10] Her fiction, non-fiction, and poetry have appeared in, among other places, The New York Times,[11] The New York Times Magazine, Filmmaker, The Believer, Post Road, St. Ann's Review, Salt Hill, Hayden's Ferry Review, Five Chapters and Spinning Jenny Her debut novel, The Long Haul, released by Soft Skull Press can be found in bookstores nationwide.

She currently lives in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, home to the novelists Colson Whitehead, Jennifer Egan and Jhumpa Lahiri, where she is working on her next novel.