Alison Woods was born and raised in New York City.  Woods' collection of poetry, Bless This Home, was published by Finishing Line Press (2020).  Her chapbook, Dark Forest, won the New Women’s Voices Chapbook Competition (Finishing Line Press, 2011). Her poems have appeared in literary journals including The Formalist, The National Poetry Review, Onthebus, The Paris Review, Poetry East, Rattapallax, and others. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize twice, and was a finalist in the Lyric Recovery Festival at Carnegie Hall.

She studied creative writing in the graduate department of McNeese State University, Lake Charles, Louisiana, poetry at Brooklyn College in New York, and earned a Master of Fine Arts degree from Columbia University in New York City (1996), where she was awarded a Division Fellowship from the School of the Arts. 

She has studied with such notable authors as Allen Ginsberg, Robert Olen Butler, Lucie Brock-Broido, Lucille Clifton, Alfred Corn, Daniel Halpren, Richard Howard, and Alice Quinn.  She has collaborated with singer-songwriters including Steve Addabbo for his CD, Out Of Nothing, and Marion LoGuidice on her CD God’s House. 

Woods’ earned a Master of Fine Arts degree from Columbia University in New York City. She currently lives in Dobbs Ferry, New York.