Daughter of Pauline and Gary Willis, she was born in Calgary, Alberta in 1982 and lived there until leaving to study at the University of Victoria.
[citation needed] Willis has worked as a technical writer and a bookseller at Munro's Books in Victoria, British Columbia.
[1] Willis' fiction has appeared in The Virginia Quarterly, The Iowa Review, The Walrus, and Zoetrope.
[citation needed] Her second collection of short fiction, The Dark and Other Love Stories (2017), was published by Hamish Hamilton, the literary imprint of Penguin Canada, and by W.W. Norton and Company in the U.S.
The New York Times wrote in a review: "Every detail is sharply placed by Willis, who has a scorching sense of humor and a soft spot for humanity down here on Earth.