[1] Chambers worked in theater management and as a freelance writer before self-publishing her first novel, The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, in 2014, after successfully raising funds on Kickstarter.

[6] The novel was the first book in the Wayfarers series, which includes three sequels: A Closed and Common Orbit, in 2016; Record of a Spaceborn Few, in 2018; and The Galaxy, and the Ground Within, in 2021.

[9] Her Wayfarers series novels take place in a fictional universe, governed by the Galactic Commons to which humans are relative newcomers.

[11] Her work has been alternately criticized and praised for the deliberate, character-driven pacing and lack of the propulsive plots typical of other space opera novels.

[12][13] Chambers has lived in Iceland and Scotland before returning to California, where she currently resides with her wife, Berglaug Asmundardottir,[1][14] in Humboldt County.