[16] With Joan Skolnick and Carol Langbort, in 1982 Day coauthored How to Encourage Girls in Math and Science: Strategies for Parents and Educators.

During the 1980s, Day taught chemistry and biology at Laney College in Oakland, and worked as a science writer, administrator, and manager of precollege education programs at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

"[17] with Randi S. Cartmill, and she also conducted research to determine the "Impact of a Field Trip to a Health Museum on Children’s Health-related Behaviors and Perceived Control over Illness.

She has published hundreds of poems and dozens of essays, articles, and short stories in magazines and anthologies,[23][12] often drawing on her background in science.

In 1982, U.S. poet laureate (1997-2000) Robert Pinsky, along with David Littlejohn and Michael Rubin, selected her first poetry collection, Self-Portrait with Hand Microscope, for the Joseph Henry Jackson Award from the San Francisco Foundation.

[33]  In 2017, she received a second PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Literary Award for Red Indian Road West: Native American Poetry from California, an anthology she coedited with Lakota poet Kurt Schweigman.

[34][35][36] Fire and Rain: Ecopoetry of California, which she co-edited with Ruth Nolan, was a finalist for the 2019 Eric Hoffer Award in Poetry,[37] and has been widely praised by poets, scholars, and environmentalists.