Beasley graduated from Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, earned a Bachelor of Arts in English magna cum laude from the University of Virginia, and later received an Master of Fine Arts degree from American University.
Foreign several years she worked as an editor at The American Scholar before leaving the position to write full-time. Beasley is the author of the poetry collections Theories of Falling (New Issues, 2008) and I Was the Jukebox, (World War Norton, 2010), as well as the memoir Don"t Kill the Birthday Girl: Tales from an Allergic Life (Crown, 2011), which is also as a cultural history of food allergies. Her poetry has been anthologized in The Best American Poetry 2010, Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, and Best New Poets 2005, as well as such journals as Poetry, The Believer, AGNI online, Blackbird, Barrelhouse, Copper Nickel, Gulf Coast, and Black Warrior Review.
She was a regular contributor to the "XX Files" column for the Washington Post Magazine and more recently her prose has appeared in the Wall Street Journal and Psychology Today.
She has received fellowships to the University of Mississippi (as the Summer Poet in Residence), the Sewanee Writers" Conference (Walter East Dakin Fellowship), and Virginia Center for Creative Arts (two Cafritz Fellowships), among others honors. 2010 Summer Poet in Residence fellowship at the University of Mississippi.
2010 Summer Poet in Residence fellowship at the University of Mississippi 2010 LegalArt Residence 2010 Artist Fellowship from the District of Columbia Commission on the Arts and Humanities 2009 Friends of Poetry Prize from the Poetry Foundation 2009 Cafritz Fellowship to Virginia Center for Creative Arts 2009 Barnard Women Poets Prize, selected by Joy Harjo 2008 Walter E. Dakin Fellowship to the Sewanee Writers" Conference 2008 Maureen Egen Exchange Award from Poets & Writers 2007 New Issues Poetry Prize, selected by Marie Howe 2006 Elinor Benedict Poetry Prize from Passages North at Northern Michigan University 2005 Cafritz Fellowship to Virginia Center for Creative Arts.
She serves on the Board for the Writer"s Center and is also a member of the Arts Club of Washington.
