Muske-Dukes grew up in
Forest Lake, Minnesota. She received B.A. English from
Creighton University in 1967, and her M.A. in 1970 from
San Francisco State University. She has taught in the graduate writing programs at
Columbia University, the
Iowa Writers' Workshop, the
University of California at Irvine, and the
University of Virginia. She is one of the founding members of the
USC PhD in Creative Writing & Literature, where she currently teaches. She has a daughter, Annie Muske-Dukes, who graduated from USC in May 2005, Her work has appeared in
Antaeus,
Ploughshares,
Paris Review, and
The New Yorker. ==Awards==