[2][3] She was a member of the first MA course in creative writing run by Bill Manhire at Victoria University of Wellington in 1996[3][4] and her first book of poetry, The Hungry Woman, was based on work written during that course.
[10] The resulting poems were published as a booklet by the Wai-te-ata Press in 2006, accompanied by photographs taken in the Neonatal Unit by Alan Knowles.
[11] One of her poems, "Cicadas", was set to music by Gillian Whitehead, having been commissioned by harpist Helen Webby (with funding from Creative New Zealand).
[4] She died on 23 March 2016, a month before the publication of Thought Horses, although a copy of the book was ready in time for her to see it.
[15][16][17] Thought Horses was posthumously longlisted for the 2017 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards.