Allison Adelle Hedge Coke was born in Texas and raised in North Carolina, Canada, and on the Great Plains. Of mixed heritage, she is a poet, writer, and educator. Though she left school to work in the fields as a child, she later took advantage of tuition-free community ed classes at North Carolina State University while a field worker.

She is the author of the poetry chapbook Year of the Rat (1996); the full-length poetry collections Dog Road Woman (1997), Off-Season City Pipe (2005), Blood Run (2006 UK, 2007 US), Streaming (2014), an illustrated (by Dustin Illetewahke Mater) special edition Burn (2017); and the memoir Rock, Ghost, Willow, Deer (2004, 2014).

Source: PoetryFoundation.org