Wolfe received a Fulbright Scholarship to travel to Amsterdam in 1992. In 2012, Wolfe received a Ph.D. in composition from Princeton University. She has been a Professor of Music Composition at New York University in the Steinhardt School since 2009, prior to which she was an Adjunct Professor at the Manhattan School of Music for seven years. In 2015 Wolfe won the Pulitzer Prize for music for her work "Anthracite Fields", and in 2016 she was named a MacArthur Fellowship recipient. In 2018, she was a recipient of an honorary degree from Drew University in New Jersey.