After graduating from Coral Gables Senior High School in Miami, Florida in 1999, Russell received a BA in Spanish from Northwestern University in 2003.

[3] She was named a National Book Foundation "5 Under 35" young writer honoree at the November 2009 ceremony[4] for her first short story collection, St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves, for which Russell won the Bard Fiction Prize in 2011.

[5] Russell's second book and first novel, Swamplandia!, about a family of alligator wrestlers and their shabby amusement park in the Everglades, was long-listed for the 2011 Orange Prize.

[9] Russell's second collection of short stories, Vampires in the Lemon Grove, was published by Vintage Contemporaries in February 2013.

Her short story "The Hox River Window," published in Zoetrope: All-Story, won the 2012 National Magazine Award for fiction.