Born and raised in Los Angeles, she received a B.A.
in English from California State University, Northridge, where she studied with the poet Ann Stanford, whose selected poems Holding Our Own: The Selected Poems of Ann Stanford she later co-edited with another former student of Stanford's, the poet David Trinidad.
She is the author of four books of poems, My Wilderness (forthcoming October 2021, University of Pittsburgh Press), Undone (New Issues 2011), Black Loam (Cherry Grove, 2005) which received the Lyre Prize and was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award for Poetry, and Toluca Street (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1989), which received the Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize, and subsequently the Oregon Book Award (Stafford/Hall Award) for Poetry.
She has taught throughout the state of Oregon, most recently at Reed College.
She lives in Eugene, Oregon with her husband, William Cadbury.