She attended Holderness School and Skidmore College, where she studied English literature, and spent the weekends as a waitress at Caffè Lena. In 2009-2010 she attended Sabhal Mòr Ostaig on the Isle of Skye for a year, obtaining a certificate in Scottish Gaelic language and music and becoming a very fluent Gaelic speaker.
Born in New Hampshire to schoolteacher parents, Kyle lived in Yup"ik native communities in the Alaskan bush until the age of seven, before her family re-located permanently to New Hampshire. Afterward, she traveled to Cape Breton in Nova Scotia on a Fulbright Fellowship to study Scottish Gaelic song and traditional music Kyle is based in Brooklyn, New New York
She is the daughter of non-fiction writer Richard Adams Carey and a direct descendent of the Adams and Quincy Adams families.
