She received her A.B. from Harvard University in 1994 (The A.B. is an abbreviation of the Latin name for the Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) degree “artium baccalaureus”) and a M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Columbia University in 1997, which is a program that workshops, master classes, seminars, and lectures are created for writers by writers who discuss student work and examine literature from a practitioner's perspective.  From 1997 to 1999 she was a Stegner Fellow in poetry at Stanford University. She became a professor at Medgar Evers College of the City University of New York, the University of Pittsburgh and Columbia University. In 2005 she joined the faculty of Princeton University, where she is professor of creative writing. Nowadays, she is the director of Princeton University’ creative writing program. 

We would like to emphasize that she has won other awards and honors like: a Wallace Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University, a 2004 Rona Jaffe Writers Award, a 2005 Whiting Award, a 2008 Essence Literary Award, a grant from the Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation and a fellowship from the Breadloaf Writers’ Conference. 

Or what commands it? When our lives slow

And we can hold all that we love, it sprawls

In our laps like a gangly doll. When the storm

Kicks up and nothing is ours, we go chasing

After all we’re certain to lose, so alive—

Faces radiant with panic.

Phosphorescent to the left, bridge

After bridge, as though our lives were

Engineered simply to go? And so we went

Into those few quiet hours

Alone together in the dark, my arm

On the rest beside yours, our lights

Pricking at fog, tugging us patiently

Forward like a needle through gauze.

Night held us like a house.

Sometimes an old song

Would fill the car like a ghost.

They speak as if it were a mysterious lover

Who went out to buy milk and never

Came back, and it makes me nostalgic

For the years I lived on coffee and bread,

Hungry all the time, walking to work on payday

Like a woman journeying for water

From a village without a well, then living

One or two nights like everyone else

On roast chicken and red wine.

Interstate 101 South, California, 1981: http://vocaroo.com/i/s0IPAIimvMvn

The Good Life:http://vocaroo.com/i/s1v1NyZzWFuS

Interstate 101 South, California, 1981: http://vocaroo.com/i/s0OWoV9jWxY5

The Good Life: http://vocaroo.com/i/s0Y1wENIBegp

Interstate 101 South, California, 1981: http://vocaroo.com/i/s1zdaoZ3YPAx

The good life: http://vocaroo.com/i/s14wQ1L0ejZh