At 17 years old, she left home to become an underground press reporter for the Berkeley Tribe.

From 1971 to 1976, Brody lived in London and Amsterdam, sampling various hippie occupations.

[1] She returned to California in the late 1970s and worked as a librarian both at the San Francisco College of Mortuary Science, and for the Sierra Club, while attending college at San Francisco State University.

[2] In 1993, she returned to college, this time at the University of Connecticut, Storrs, earning her PhD in English.

Brody undertook various fellowships and assistantships and became part of UCONN's English department from 1994 to 1998.