[1] She attended Louisiana State University[2] and, after graduating, the Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado, where she studied language and consciousness with Allen Ginsberg and Choyyam Trungapa Rinpoche, as well as acting, movement, and voice with members of The Living Theatre.
Wells' first book, Little Altars Everywhere, (1992) recounts the multi-layered saga of the turbulent Walker family in Thornton, Louisiana, from the 1960s to the present and introduces the characters Siddalee Walker, her mother Viviane, and her mother's best friends, the Ya-Yas, whose stories continue in Wells' other books.
[10] It was adapted for the 2002 film Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood starring Sandra Bullock as Siddalee Walker and Ellen Burstyn as her mother Vivi.
[12] Ya-Yas in Bloom reached the #3 spot on both the New York Times and Publishers Weekly bestseller lists [13][14] Her fourth novel, The Crowning Glory of Calla Lily Ponder, (2009) set in 1960s Louisiana, departs from the characters in Wells' other books, an introduces a new character, Calla Lily Ponder, and her friends.
[15] A playwright and actor before she began writing fiction, Wells is known for her one-woman show, Splittin' Hairs, and her play, Gloria Duplex, about a French Quarter erotic dancer who sees the face of God in a disco ball, which was called "one of the glories of the decade" by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.