She graduated from Pomona College, in Claremont, California, and earned a master's in creative writing and a doctorate in English literature at the University of Washington.
Aldrich taught creative writing and English literature at Michigan State University from 1990 until her retirement in 2017.
From 2008 to 2011 she edited Fourth Genre, one of the premiere journals featuring personal essays and memoirs.
[2] Aldrich is the author of the free memoir Girl Rearing, published by W.W. Norton, which was selected for the Barnes & Noble Discover New Writers Series and cited among Notable Twentieth Century American Literary Nonfiction in The Best American Essays of the Century, edited by Joyce Carol Oates (Houghton Mifflin).
Aldrich's most recent volume is Studio of the Voice, a collection of essays published in 2024 by Wandering Aengus Press.