Intending to become a journalist, she attended the University of Washington; but a poetry-writing class with faculty member Theodore Roethke shifted her interests. Her first poems, written for Roethke's class, concerned her father and explored her origins. She did not complete her course work in four years, leaving the university to marry Lawrence Gallagher, a sculptor, in June 1963. The dissolution of her marriage in 1968 sparked new poems, many of which are in her first full-length collection, Instructions to the Double (1976).
Gallagher received her B.A. in English from the University of Washington in 1968 and her M.A. from the same institution in 1970, then attended the University of Iowa's Writers Workshop, graduating with an M.F.A. in 1974. She has since had a distinguished career as a writer and teacher. She has taught at Saint Lawrence University (1974-1975); Kirkland College (1975-1977); the University of Montana (1977-1978); the University of Arizona, Tucson (1979-1980); and Syracuse University (1980-present). She was the recipient of a Creative Artist Public Service Grant from the New York State Arts Council (1976); the Elliston Award (1976); National Endowment for the Arts grants (1976 and 1981); a Guggenheim Fellowship (1978-1979); two Governor's Awards for Poetry from the state of Washington; and the Chancellor's Citation from Syracuse University.
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