[3] Delbanco attended Harvard College, concentrating in history and literature of the United States and writing her senior thesis on William Faulkner's novel Go Down, Moses and concepts of familial honor in the Old South.
[1] She also took creative writing workshops, studying with Jayne Anne Phillips, Jamaica Kincaid and Richard Ford, and went on to earn an MFA from the University of Michigan.
[1] Between college and her MFA program, Delbanco worked in New York City for two and a half years, briefly in publicity for Warner Books, then for Seventeen magazine where she was an editorial assistant, then staff writer.
[4][5][6] In 2017, the serial comedy Friends from College debuted on Netflix, created by Delbanco and her husband Nicholas Stoller, who also directed the series.
[10] In 2005, Delbanco married screenwriter and director Nicholas Stoller, whom she met at a playwriting workshop for Harvard alumni in 2001.