Carrie Brownstein

Brownstein was born in Seattle, Washington, and was raised in Redmond, Washington. Her mother was a housewife and a teacher, and her father was a corporate lawyer. They divorced when Carrie was 14, and she was raised by her father. Brownstein has a younger sister, Stacey. Her family is Jewish.

She attended Lake Washington High School before transferring to The Overlake School for her senior year.

Brownstein began playing guitar at 15 and received lessons from Jeremy Enigk. She later said: "He lived in the neighborhood next to mine, so I would just walk my guitar over to his house. He showed me a couple of open chords and I just took it from there. I'd gone through so many phases as a kid with my interests that my parents put their foot down with guitar. So [the instrument] ended up being the [first] thing that I had to save up my own money for – and maybe that was the whole reason that I actually stuck with it."

After high school, Brownstein attended Western Washington University before transferring to The Evergreen State College. In 1997, Brownstein graduated from Evergreen with an emphasis on sociolinguistics and stayed in Olympia, Washington, for three years before moving to Portland, Oregon.Brownstein began a career as a writer before Sleater-Kinney broke up. She interviewed Eddie Vedder, Mary Lynn Rajskub, Karen O, and Cheryl Hines for The Believer magazine. Brownstein has also written a couple of music-related video game reviews for Slate.

From November 2007 to May 2010, Brownstein wrote a blog for NPR Music called "Monitor Mix"; she returned for a final blog post in October, thanking her blog readers and declaring the blog "officially conclude[d]."

In March 2009, Brownstein was contracted to write a book to "describe the dramatically changing dynamic between music fan and performer, from the birth of the iPod and the death of the record store to the emergence of the 'you be the star' culture of American Idol and the ensuing dilution of rock mystique"; The book, called The Sound of Where You Are, was planned to be published by Ecco/HarperCollins. In an April 2012 interview on Marc Maron's WTF podcast, Brownstein said she was no longer working on the book.

Brownstein's memoir, Hunger Makes Me A Modern Girl, was released on October 27, 2015. The book was published by Riverhead Books, an imprint of Penguin Books USA.

In 2020, Ann Wilson, lead singer of hard rock band Heart, announced in an interview that Brownstein was writing the script for a Heart biographical film.

Brownstein has acted (what she calls a "mere hobby") in the short film Fan Mail, the experimental feature Group, and the Miranda July film Getting Stronger Every Day. Brownstein and Fred Armisen published several video skits as part of a comedy duo called "ThunderAnt." She also starred opposite James Mercer of The Shins in the 2010 independent film Some Days Are Better Than Others. The film had its world premiere at SXSW on March 13, 2010.

After their ThunderAnt videos, Brownstein and Armisen developed Portlandia, a sketch comedy show shot on location in Portland, for the Independent Film Channel. The two starred in the series and wrote for it with co-creator Jonathan Krisel, a writer for Saturday Night Live. The show, which featured appearances of some of the characters from ThunderAnt, premiered in January 2011. The series received positive feedback and concluded after its eighth season in 2018.

From 2014 to 2019, Brownstein played the role of Syd in the Amazon Studios original series Transparent.

In 2015, Brownstein portrayed Genevieve Cantrell in the Todd Haynes film Carol, based on Patricia Highsmith's novel The Price of Salt. However, the majority of her scenes were cut due to the film's length. The film had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival on May 17, 2015. It began a limited release on November 20, 2015.

Brownstein has also appeared as a guest on Saturday Night Live, Curb Your Enthusiasm, and Man Seeking Woman, among other shows.

Brownstein starred in and wrote the screenplay for The Nowhere Inn, a 2020 tour mockumentary thriller, with Annie Clark (St. Vincent).