[citation needed] She attended Goucher College, where she graduated magna cum laude in 1968 with a bachelor's degree.

She pursued a master's degree in creative writing at Boston University, where she studied with Anne Sexton, and graduated in 1970.

Bass has taught poetry at the low-residency Master of Fine Arts program at Pacific University in Oregon since 2007.

[5] In 2013, she founded the Poetry Program at the Salinas Valley State Prison, which offers a weekly workshop to incarcerated men.

The Human Line (Copper Canyon Press, 2007) was named among the notable books of 2007 in the poetry section by the San Francisco Chronicle,[7] and Mules of Love (BOA Editions, 2002) won the 2002 Lambda Literary Award.