She was raised in Houston, Texas.She graduated from Princeton University, Yale Law School with a J.D., and Oxford University with a M. Phil, where she was a Rhodes Scholar.

She works as a lawyer at the Brennan Center for Justice, New York University Law School, and teaches at Columbia University. She appeared on Hardball with Chris Matthews. She is on the Advising Artists Council, for the Millay Colony for the Arts.

Her poems have appeared in Oxford Poetry, Gulf Coast, Paris Review. Her collection Ignatz was a finalist for the 2010 National Book Award in Poetry.

She lives in Manhattan.

• "Venice, Unaccompanied", Poetry Foundation
• "Titian’s Salome", AGNI 53, 2001
• "the wedding of ignatz", Tin House Review, Fall 2005

Anthologies

Essays

• "OF POETRY AND POWER: REFLECTIONS ON THE INAUGURATION", Poetry Foundaion