Beattie has taught at Harvard College and the University of Connecticut and was for a long time associated with the University of Virginia, where she was first appointed as a part-time lecturer in 1980. She later became Edgar Allan Poe Chair of the Department of English and Creative Writing in 2000 and remained at UVA until 2013, when she resigned over disappointment at the direction in which the university was heading. In 2005 she was selected as winner of the Rea Award for the Short Story, in recognition of her outstanding achievement in that genre.