She is author of eight full-length poetry collections, most recently, Confessions of a Bare-Faced Woman (Red Hen Press, 2018).

Born in London, England, to parents of Jamaican heritage, Allison Joseph grew up in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and the Bronx, New York.

[1] She graduated from Kenyon College with a B.A., and from Indiana University Bloomington with a Master of Fine Arts.

[1] She teaches at Southern Illinois University Carbondale (SIUC), and is Director of the Young Writers Workshop at SIUC, which she founded in 1999: a four-day summer program for high school students.

For more than thirty years, Joseph was married to fellow poet Jon Tribble, with whom she co-founded Crab Orchard Review.