Educated at Harvard University and holding a Master's degree in Creative Writing from Boston University, she has also studied at the Playwrights' Theatre in Boston and has contributed to theatre and film production in Hollywood. Richards received a national Mellon Fellowship in the Humanities in the U.S., Outstanding Teaching Award from the Faculty of Arts at HKU, a Vermont Studio Writer’s Fellowship for Poetry and Translation, among many other awards. She currently directs the MFA in Creative Writing, the HKU International Poetry Prize, the Writers’ Series, Moving Poetry, production of Yuan Yang: A Journal of Hong Kong and International Writing, and the new HKU Black Box Theatre.