Zepeda is Houston's first Poet Laureate, serving a two-year term from 2013 to 2015.

Zepeda sold her first book, To the Last Man I Slept with and All the Jerks Just Like Him, a short story collection, in 2000.

It is a 2009 Charlotte Zolotow Highly Commended Title[9] and was nominated for a Tejas Star Award.

Arte Público Press published her first book of poetry, Falling in Love with Fellow Prisoners, in 2014.

She cites Sandra Cisneros, Margaret Atwood, Alice Munro, Louise Gluck, Jane Austen, Ursula K. LeGuin, and Judy Blume as some of her writing influences.