Alice, In a Country of Mothers, and Jack, as well as the short-story collections, Things You Should Know and The Safety of Objects, the best-selling memoir, The Mistress's Daughter along with a travel memoir, Los Angeles: People, Places and The Castle on the Hill, and the artist's book Appendix A:. 

Her work has been translated into twenty-two languages. She has also created original television pilots for HBO, FX and CBS and was a writer/producer of the Showtime series The L Word. Additionally, Homes wrote the adaptation of her first novel JACK, for Showtime. Director Rose Troche's 2003 adaptation of The Safety of Objects marked the screen debut of Kristen Stewart. Homes has been the recipient of numerous awards including Fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, NYFA, and The Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at The New York Public Library, along with the Benjamin Franklin Award, and the Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis. Homes was born in Washington D.C., she now lives in New York City and teaches in the Creative Writing Program at Princeton.