Born in Ontario, Oregon,[1] Madeline DeFrees lived in Seattle, Washington.

She continued to write and teach until she was almost 90, joining the faculty of the Pacific University low-residency MFA program in Forest Grove, Oregon, and lecturing at the low-residency MFA program of the Northwest Institute of Literary Arts (Whidbey Writers Workshop) in January 2009.

She received a Guggenheim Fellowship in Poetry and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Her final collection was Spectral Waves, (Copper Canyon Press, 2006).

Spectral Waves won a 2007 Washington State Book Award for Poetry.