Born in Grandfield, Oklahoma, in the Red River Valley near the Texas border, Donna Hilbert has spent most of her life in Southern California and graduated from California State University, Long Beach. Her short story collection Women Who Make Money and the Men Who Love Them won the Staple First Editions prize in England in 1994. Poetry collections include Deep Red (Event Horizon Press, 1993), Transforming Matter (Pearl Editions, 2000), Traveler in Paradise: New and Selected Poems (Pearl Editions, 2004), The Green Season (World Parade Books, 2009), and Enormous Blue Umbrella (Moon Tide Press, 2025). Her life and work are the subject of the documentary Grief Becomes Me: A Love Story.
