Earley is a clinical scientist with a background in biology and organic chemistry. She is the author of the popular Substack series, Queering Reality, with 100,000+ subscribers. She is also the author of two novels: A Map of Everything, a debut finalist for the Lambda Literary Prize; and Like Wings, Your Hands (Red Hen Press), winner of the Women's Prose Prize (judged by Aimee Bender), the American Fiction Prize for Best LGBTQ novel, and a finalist for the Ferro-Grumley Award for LGBTQ Fiction by the Publishing Triangle, alongside Ocean Vuong and Jacqueline Woodson. She holds an MFA in Fiction from Antioch University-Los Angeles. Her stories and essays have appeared in Hayden's Ferry Review, The First Line Magazine, Fugue, Hair Trigger, and Glimmer Train, among other publications. She was awarded the David Friedman Memorial Prize for Fiction and was twice a finalist for the AWP New Journals Award. She has received two Pushcart nominations and was a finalist for the 2011 Bakeless Literary Prize for Fiction.