Her many awards include an NEA Fellowship and five PEN Syndicated Fiction Awards. She won a book award from the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association (PNBA) in 1991 for Floating in My Mother's Palm. She has also written many reviews for The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and The Washington Post. For many years, she taught creative writing at Eastern Washington University. Her recent books include Stones from the River (1994), Intrusions (1995), Tearing the Silence: On Growing Up German in America (1998), The Vision of Emma Blau (2000), Hotel of the Saints: Stories (2001), Sacred Time (2004), and The Worst Thing I've Done (2007).