Kate Daniels has published several collections of poetry, including The Niobe Poems (1988), Four Testimonies (1998), and A Walk in Victoria's Secret (2010). Daniels has won the Hanes Award for Poetry from the Fellowship of Southern Writers, a Pushcart Prize, the Louisiana Literature Prize for Poetry, the James Dickey Prize, the Crazyhorse Prize for Poetry, and fellowships from the Lannan Foundation and Harvard University’s Bunting Institute. Her work has been widely anthologized, including in Best American Poetry.

She has taught at Bennington College, Louisiana State University, the University of Virginia, and Wake Forest University. Currently she is professor of English and creative writing at Vanderbilt University.