Born and raised in New Jersey, she received a B.A. in English Composition from Mount Holyoke College and her M.F.A. from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

Her story, “Elvis Lives,” was awarded the 1990 Edgar Allan Poe Award of the Mystery Writers of America for Best Mystery Short Story and has been widely anthologized. “Beauty” won the Best Short Story Award at the Moondance International Film Festival in 2001. She has received an NEA (1991), and an artist's fellowship from the Florida Division of Cultural Affairs (2001-02). Her short stories have appeared in Redbook, twice in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Mondo Barbie (St. Martin's), Literature: Reading and Responding to Fiction, Poetry, Drama and the Essay (HarperCollins), Simply the Best Mysteries (Carroll & Graf), Irrepressible Appetites ( Rock Press), Marilyn: Shades of Blonde (Forge) and many other magazines and anthologies. Recent stories have appeared in A Dixie Christmas ( Algonquin Books, 2005), Miami Noir ( Akashic Books, 2006), One Year to a Writing Life (Marlowe & Company, 2007), and Delta Blues (Tyrus Books, 2010).

She wrote the libretto for the children's opera Cricketina. She has co-edited a collection of James M. Cain's nonfiction and Birth: A Literary Companion, an anthology of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction about becoming a parent. She founded Gulf Stream Magazine and went on to edit it from 1989-2002. She is founder and editor of FloridaBookReview.com and Professor of English at Florida International University where she teaches in the M.F.A. program in Creative Writing.