She was educated for a year at Somerville College, Oxford, and graduated from New Hall, Cambridge.
Among her poetry publications are Penguin Modern Poets 10, with Douglas Oliver and Iain Sinclair (1996).
Her poetry collections include Marxism for Infants (1977); the volume No Fee (1979), with Wendy Mulford; Dry Air (1985); Stair Spirit (1992); Mop Mop Georgette (1993); Selected Poems (2000); Say Something Back (2016), which was nominated for a Forward Prize for Best Poetry Collection; and Lurex (2022).
Riley’s non-fiction prose includes War in the Nursery: Theories of the Child and Mother (1983); 'Am I That Name?
': Feminism and the Category of Women in History (1988); The Words of Selves: Identification, Solidarity, Irony (2000); and Impersonal Passion: Language as Affect (2005).