[2] Her master's thesis at the University of Iowa became Dharma Girl, a memoir about Cain's early childhood on the hippie commune.

[3] She traveled across the United States on book tour with Dharma Girl, living for a brief period in Portland, Oregon, and then in New York City.

After a year in New York, she returned to Portland, and edited an anthology for Seal Press titled Wild Child: Girlhoods in the Counterculture.

Cain is married to Marc Mohan, a video store owner and film reviewer for The Oregonian, and have lived in Southeast Portland since 2006.

[5] After working as a creative director at a public relations firm in Portland for several years, Cain began writing humor books in her spare time, including The Hippie Handbook: How to Tie-Dye a T-Shirt, Flash a Peace Sign, and Other Essential Skills for the Carefree Life (Chronicle Books, 2004), Confessions of a Teen Sleuth (Bloomsbury, 2005), and Does this Cape Make Me Look Fat?

Man-Eaters was criticized for failing to account for trans experiences as the plot revolves around a disease that impacts people based on sex-specific symptoms.