Ann Townsend is the author of Dear Delinquent (Sarabande Books, 2019), The Coronary Garden (Sarabande Books, 2005), and Dime Store Erotics (Silverfish Review Press, 1998) and is editor, with David Baker, of Radiant Lyre: Essays on Lyric Poetry (Graywolf Press, 2007).

The recipient of grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Ohio Arts Council, she has also received fellowships from the Bread Load Writers' Conference, the MacDowell Colony, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the Lannan Foundation.

She is the cofounder of VIDA: Women in Literary Arts. In 2016 she, along with cofounders Cate Marvin and Erin Belieu, accepted the Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Award, given in recognition of their work for the larger literary community. A professor of English and Director of Creative Writing at Denison University in Granville, Ohio, Ann Townsend hybridizes modern daylilies at Bittersweet Farm.