Hood lives in Providence, Rhode Island. She has two children, daughter Annabelle and son Sam, both with former husband Lorne. Annabelle is adopted. She is currently married to writer Michael Ruhlman.[20]
On April 18, 2002, Hood's five-year-old daughter, Grace, died from a virulent form of strep.[21] For two years Hood found herself unable to write or even read. She took solace in learning to knit and in knitting groups. She gradually made her way back to her craft, writing short essays about Grace and grief. To make sense of her own grief, in late 2004 Hood began to write her novel The Knitting Circle, about a woman whose five-year-old daughter dies from meningitis. The woman joins a knitting group of others also struggling to heal from loss. Hood’s best-selling memoir Comfort: A Journey Through Grief chronicles her own struggle after her daughter’s sudden death.[22]
