Addonizio was a child in Washington DC as second-wave feminism rolled through the 1960s. Her parents—a noted sportswriter and a champion tennis player—modeled careers outside of the corporate model. Addonizio moved to San Francisco in early adulthood, and stayed. She resided in the Bay Area through a period of dramatic socio-economic change during which artists were increasingly forced out of neighborhoods of soaring real estate values, making way for the tech workers who were pouring into and out of Silicon Valley. In poems like “What Do Women Want?” and other works, Addonizio includes images of the neighborhood streets and their denizens as she experienced them before extensive gentrification.

All this to say, Addonizio is of a generation of poets who have had to be creative—and resourceful—to make their own way as artists. She had her own author website well before they were considered de rigeur for writers, on which she posted a semi-regular blog about writing and the writing life, among other subjects. Her teaching career—both in university settings and through private workshops—reflects the kind of flexibility that allows a teaching artist to both teach and write without a tenured university position.

Although she identifies primarily as a poet, Addonizio’s oeuvre includes two nonfiction books on writing poetry, including the highly regarded The Poet’s Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry (1997), and several works of fiction.