Her first novel, Ellen Foster (1987), received the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, a Special Citation from the Ernest Hemingway Foundation and the Louis D. Rubin, Jr. Prize in Creative Writing from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Gibbons was born in Nash County, North Carolina, and went to Rocky Mount Senior High School.
Gibbons has bipolar disorder and notes that she is extremely creative during her manic phases, in which she believes that everything is instrumented by a "real magic".
On November 2, 2008, Gibbons was arrested on prescription drug fraud charges.
According to authorities, she was taken into custody while trying to pick up a fraudulent prescription for the painkiller hydrocodone.