[9] Her first novel, Slow Dancing (Alfred A. Knopf), was a finalist for the 1985 National Book Award[10] and the Los Angeles Times Fiction Prize.

A second edition, published in 2002, was updated to include the new role of the Internet and the Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky scandal in writing about sex in fiction The book was also published in the U.K., Germany and Australia[12][13][14][15] Benedict teaches workshops on writing about sex in fiction at writers' conferences and has appeared on radio shows discussing the issue in the U.S., UK, and Australia.

[27] Her second anthology, What My Mother Gave Me: Thirty-one Women on the Gifts that Mattered Most (2013 Algonquin Books), was a New York Times Bestseller.

[28] Her third, Me, My Hair and I: Twenty-seven Women Untangle an Obsession (2015, Algonquin Books) includes essays by Maria Hinojosa, Marita Golden, and Jane Smiley.

About her second novel, The Beginner's Book of Dreams, Kirkus Reviews wrote: "Benedict handles Manhattan life, in this case a young girl's exploration of semi-fraudulent Manhattan life, superbly—with the vibrancy of The World of Henry Orient (that underappreciated book by Nora Johnson) or with the emotional dislocations of the better work of John O'Hara and Richard Yates.

In 1960, Joseph "Mad Dog" Taborsky was the last man executed in the state of Connecticut until 2005, after being released from death row for the murder of Benedict's uncle.