She holds degrees from the University of Virginia and UNC- Greensboro, where she was poetry editor of The Greensboro Review. Her books are Pharaoh, Pharaoh and Pinion: An Elegy, both from LSU, and her work has appeared in The Southern Review, The New England Review and Prairie Schooner. She has been a recipient of literature fellowships from the NEA and the Virginia Commission for the Arts. (She is also a contributing editor for Shenandoah.)