Elizabeth Alexander was born on May 30, 1962, in New York City and grew up in Washington, D.C. She is the daughter of Clifford Leopold Alexander, a business consultant, and Adele Logan Alexander, a historian and writer. Alexander received her bachelor's degree from Yale University in 1984. She went on to receive her master's degree from Boston University in 1987 and her Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1992.

Though destined to become a poet and university professor, Alexander began her professional life with a one-year stint as a reporter for the Washington Post. During the last four years of the 1980s, she taught at several schools both in Philadelphia and Boston. For the academic year 1990—1991, Alexander was scholar-in-residence at Haverford College in Haverford, Pennsylvania. From 1991 to 1997, she was a reviewer for the Village Voice and assistant professor of English at the University of Chicago. After that...