[3] Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self, her first short story collection, won the 2011 PEN/Robert Bingham Prize.

[4] Reviewing the book in The New York Times, Lydia Peelle observed that the stories "evoke the thrill of an all-night conversation with your hip, frank, funny college roommate.

"[5] Evans's work was anthologized in Houghton Mifflin Harcourt's Best American Short Stories collections in 2008, 2010, and 2017.

On July 17, 2020, Evans was featured on an episode of This American Life in the series "How to be alone", her audio segment being titled "The Unbearable Part".

In April 2021, Evans won the Joyce Carol Oates Literary Prize.