I grew up in the Inland Empire of Southern California and have lived and worked in Boston, Madrid, Boulder, Chicago, Dallas, Taipei, and Seattle.

I am the author of seven books of poetry, as well as an oral historian, photographer, and editor. My work has appeared in publications throughout the U.S., Japan, China, Taiwan, The United Kingdom, and Canada. Poems have been commissioned by the Dallas Museum of Art and my work is also featured in the Poetry-in-Motion Program sponsored by DART. I have been a featured presenter at major events including the Montreal Zen Poetry Festival and the Geraldine Dodge Poetry Festival. In 2010, I became a member of the Macondo Workshop for Writers.

I have served as a poet-in-residence for the Seattle Art Museum and produced literary programming for the Crow Collection of Asian Art, the Women's Museum of Dallas, and the Rubin Museum of Art. I am former assistant curator for the Wittliff Collections and am currently associate director of the Hendrix-Murphy Foundation for Language and Literature at Hendrix College.

I received my MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an MA in Museology from the University of Washington.