Rosalind MacPhee was born in Summerland, B.C. on January 29, 1946. She worked as an employment and employee relations officer, a systems and methods analyst, as a banker, and as an ambulance attendent prior to completing her B.F.A. at University of British Columbia. She was appointed to work in Family Court and Youth Services in 1983, the same year she also served as deputy leader of the Howe Sound Search and Rescue. Her second book Maggie (Coach House, 1980), reprinted four times, is one of the bestselling poetry titles in the history of Coach House Press. It's the journal of a 36-year-old homemaker and graduate student in astronomy whose thesis on black holes is nearing completion as her marriage is dissolving. Her two other poetry books are Scarecrow (Fiddlehead, 1979) and What Place is This? (Coach House, 1983). She published a memoir of her struggle with breast cancer called Picasso's Woman: A Breast Cancer Story (D&M, 1994). After she died in 1996, funds were raised for a bench and a plaque at UBC in her honour. She lived in Lions Bay.

[BCBW 1997] "Health" "Women" "Poetry"