She graduated from Beloit College, and Indiana University, with an M.F.A., in 1997.
She worked as an x-ray librarian, a knife seller, a food critic, and writer for Isthmus Newspaper, the alternative weekly in Madison, Wisconsin, where she writes a biweekly culture column about the bizarre, called “On the Loose.”.
She was a visiting writer at DePauw University.She teaches at St. Joseph's University.
Her work appeared in Bomb, Image Journal, Hayden's Ferry Review
Some poets aren't satisfied with plain clothes or plain language, they turn their metaphors into absurdist imaging or trace an elliptical line of thought. But, sometimes, they simply paint their face perfectly seductive and then smear it, walk out in public with mad sexhair not just for show but for a sense of bawdy, over-the-top control of the world remembered/encountered. Tenaya Darlington is one such poet and her debut, Madame Deluxe, is full of such brash and brazen flaunt.