Barber's previous poetry collections are WORKS ON PAPER (winner of the 2015 Tenth Gate Prize); Given Away; and RIGGING THE WIND (winner of the Kore Press 2002 First Book Award). She founded the literary journal Salamander in 1992 and served as its editor in chief at Suffolk University in Boston through 2018. Recent poems have appeared in Consequence, Paris Review, Poetry, Tiferet (2019 Poetry Prize), and elsewhere. She has received fellowships from the MacDowell Colony and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and is the current poet laureate of Brookline, MA.