Born in Buffalo, NY in 1967, Jarnot studied with Robert Creeley at SUNY Buffalo and later earned an MFA at Brown University. The author of four full-length poetry collections and the former editor of the Poetry Project Newsletter, she has also just published Robert Duncan: The Ambassador From Venus (University of California, 2012), the definitive biography of the San Francisco poet. Since the mid-1990s, she has lived in New York City.