Born in New Jersey, she was educated at Harvard University, the University of Iowa—where she took an MFA at the prestigious writers’ program—and at Manchester Metropolitan University. She has taught at a number of universities in the UK, including Oxford Brookes University, and is now a Senior Researcher in Creative Writing at Kingston University. She has published two collections with Carcanet: Marabou (2005), which was nominated for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, the Whitbread Book Award and the Jerwood Aldeburgh First Collection Prize, and The Ninjas (2012).