[7] Jamison was a member of the college literary magazine The Advocate and social club The Signet Society.

At Yale, she worked with Wai Chee Dimock, Amy Hungerford, and Caleb Smith, submitting a dissertation titled "The Recovered: Addiction and Sincerity in 20th-Century American Literature" in 2016.

[15] Jamison has described the book as the account of a "young New Yorker [who] goes looking for an aunt she’s never met...and finds her drinking herself to death in a Nevada trailer.

[15] Jamison's second book, The Empathy Exams, an essay collection published by Graywolf Press, debuted in 2014 at number 11 on the New York Times bestseller list.

[18] The book received wide acclaim from critics,[19][20][21][22][23] with Olivia Laing writing in The New York Times, "It’s hard to imagine a stronger, more thoughtful voice emerging this year.

[27][28] Her 2024 memoir Splinters: Another Kind of Love Story was published to positive reviews, focusing on her divorce and struggles raising her daughter.

[35] Jamison lives in Park Slope, Brooklyn, with a daughter she shares with her ex-husband, the writer Charles Bock.