She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Denver and an M.A. from the University of Utah. She has directed the BYU Reading Series and been a reviewer and contributing editor for Tar River Poetry, the poetry editor of Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought and Literature and Belief, the managing editor of the Denver Quarterly, and the editor of Exponent II. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, The New Yorker, Shenandoah, Southwest Review, and other journals. Her first collection, Stone Spirits, won the publication award of the Redd Center for Western Studies. She co-edited the collection Discoveries: Two Centuries of Poems by Mormon Women, which has been released in a second edition. Her next collection, Woman & Snake, will be published by Signature Books in 2012. She and her husband, Cless young, live in Ephraim, Utah.