Elizabeth T. Chao was born in Houston, Texas, and spent her early childhood in Hong Kong and Taiwan. She received a BA in Comparative Literature from the University of California, Berkeley, and holds nursing degrees from Johns Hopkins University and the University of California at San Francisco’s School of Nursing. She worked for several years as an oncology nurse in California before moving back to Texas, where she earned an MFA in poetry from the James A. Michener Center at the University of Texas at Austin.