She has been recognized for her poems and essays in The New York Times Magazine, American Poetry Review, The Kenyon Review, The New Republic, Tin House, the Best American Poetry series, and on National Public Radio,[2] among others.

[3] She grew up in Seattle, Washington, the daughter of a Chinese-American mother and a Norwegian father.

[4] Rekdal is a professor at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, and at Goddard College's low-residency Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing program in Port Townsend, Washington.

[5][6] She is also credited with having created the community web project Mapping Salt Lake City.

[1] In 2018, Rekdal was awarded the Narrative Prize for a trilogy of poems, “Quiver,” “Telling the Wasps,” and “The Olive Tree at Vouves,” which combine "Keatsian lyricism with a mortal questioning of the nature of memory in the modern age.