In 2008 and 2009, McCracken lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she was a fellow at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute.

They have a son, August George Carey Harvey, and a daughter, Matilda Libby Mary Harvey; an earlier child died before birth, an experience that formed the basis of McCracken's memoir An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination.

She is the sister of former PC World magazine editor-in-chief and founder of Technologizer.com Harry McCracken.

Ann Patchett, in an interview for Blackbird at Virginia Commonwealth University, mentions that Elizabeth McCracken is her editor, and is the only person to read her manuscripts as she is writing them.

Among the nine stories is a tale about a successful documentary filmmaker who has to face a famous subject he manipulated and betrayed; one about a young scholar who is mourning his wife; and another about a grocery store manager who obsesses about a woman's disappearance.