Haven Kimmel was born in New Castle, Indiana, and was raised in Mooreland, Indiana, the focus of her bestselling memoir, A Girl Named Zippy: Growing up Small in Mooreland, Indiana (2001).

Kimmel earned her undergraduate degree in English and creative writing from Ball Sate University in Muncie, Indiana and attended North Carolina State University, where she studied with novelist Lee Smith. She also attended seminary at the Earlham School of Religion in Richmond, Indiana. She lives in Durham, North Carolina.

Haven Kimmel was a poet prior to writing a memoir of her early childhood. The Solace of Leaving Early (2002) and Something Rising (Light and Swift) (2004) and The Used World (2007), form a "trilogy of place" about fictional Hopwood County, Indiana. Her other works include a second memoir, She Got Up Off the Couch (2005), two children’s books, Orville: A Dog Story (2003), and Kaline Klattermaster’s Tree House (2008), and a retelling of the Book of Revelation in Killing the Buddha: A Heretic's Bible (2004), edited by Peter Manseau and Jeff Sharlet.