Durastanti was born in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Bensonhurst to two deaf Italian parents, who divorced in 1990.

This and other aspects of her life (like an incident in which her father kidnapped her as a child) are described in her semi-autobiographical novel La Straniera (published in English as Strangers I Know).

She is a board member of the Turin International Book Fair and co-founded the Italian Festival of Literature in London.

[6] She has translated several works into Italian, including Joshua Cohen's The Netanyahus and Donna Haraway's Staying with the Trouble, as well as Ocean Vuong's On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous and F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby.

[6] She writes a music column for Internazionale and serves as a curator for the feminist imprint La Tartaruga, founded by Laura Lepetit in 1975.