Zevin was born in New York City. Zevin's father, who is American-born, has Ashkenazi Jewish, Russian, Lithuanian, and Polish ancestry. Her mother was born in Korea and emigrated to the United States when she was 9 years old. The two met in high school in Connecticut and later worked for IBM.
She grew up in Boca Raton, Florida and graduated from Spanish River Community High School in 1996. She enrolled at Harvard University, where she studied English with a concentration in American Literature. While at Harvard, she met her partner, Hans Canosa and graduated in 2000.
For nearly a decade, Zevin lived in Manhattan before moving to Los Angeles in 2012, where she presently lives with Canosa.