Kirk was born and raised in the village of Wellsville, New York. She received her bachelor's degree in English from Binghamton University in 1985, a master's degree in English and Creative writing from Binghamton in 1988, and Ph.D. in English from Binghamton in 2004. She is married with two sons, and lives in the Finger Lakes region of New York State.

Pre-writing career

Beginning in 1988, Kirk became an adjunct professor in the English department at Mansfield University of Pennsylvania where she taught courses in English and creative writing.

She was the first member of the department to create and run online courses for the university, and continues to run them during summer sessions.

Published works

Kirk's first published books were all nonfiction, including several titles for Greenwood Press's biography series. One of her first was a biography of British author J. K. Rowling which turned out to be a bestseller. The School Library Journal reviewer wrote that "the scholarly writing style and evaluative content make this volume useful to high school students studying Rowling and her work."

It has since been translated into Japanese, Chinese, and Estonian.

In 2004, Kirk published her first children's picture book Sky Dancers with Lee & Low Books. Sky Dancers is about the Mohawk skyscraper builders in 1930s New York City and was selected by The Children's Book Committee at Bank Street College of Education for their Best Children's Books of the Year and by Rutgers University's EconKids program as one of their "Top 5 Books on Human Resources."

Kirk developed an interest in poet Emily Dickinson during her doctorate work at Binghamton. She joined the Emily Dickinson International Society and has written a number of articles for their semi-annual publication and given papers at their international conferences, including the 2010 conference at Oxford University.Her book on Emily Dickinson grew out of her dissertation.

Books

Other works

In addition to her published writing, Kirk runs a number of online discussion groups, and contributes to the Examiner.com web site.