Givhan earned her M.A. in English Literature at California State University Fullerton, where she was the recipient of the Graduate Equity Fellowship. Her poems have appeared in Verdad, Dash, Caesura, Mom Writer's Literary Magazine, Third Wednesday, Cutthroat, Pinyon, Earth's Daughters, Rockhurst Review, Palabra, Prick of the Spindle, and Mothering Magazine, and she was a 2010 recipient of the Emerging Voices Fellowship through PEN Center USA.