Born in Topeka, Kansas, in 1973. She is a poet and essayist, the author of books such as The Romance of Happy Workers (2008), My Common Heart (2011), Garments Against Women (2015) and A Handbook of Disappointed Fate (2018). Her work has been distinguished with, among other awards, the Windham-Campbell Literature Prize, the CLMP Firecracker Award, the Whiting Award and the Cy Twombly Award, granted by the Foundation for Contemporary Arts. Since 2011, she has been a lecturer at the Kansas City Art Institute. The Undying won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Non-fiction.