In 2023, with the support of the Office for Veteran and Military Academic Engagement at ASU, she founded the veteran-centered literary journal, ISSUED: stories of service and created Verses for Vets, a poetic medicine program for veterans.

In addition to becoming a TEDx speaker in April 2022, her awards include an Arts Hero Award (2017), a Fellowship from the Lincoln Center for Applied Ethics (2017), a Fellowship from the Academy of American Poets (2020), a Great 48 award from Phoenix Magazine (2020), an Arizona Humanities Speaker of the Year award (2022), and an Arizona Capital Times Leader of the Year award (2023).

In 2025, she was invited by Arizona’s Secretary of State, Adrian Fontes, to write and perform a poem for America’s quincentennial celebration (America250), Two Lights for Tomorrow, at the Arizona State Capital.

RD has given hundreds of readings across the Southwest and has been the featured poet at the AZ NOW Conference, the AZ Public Defenders Conference, the AZ Humanities Annual Awards Celebration, the 19th Amendment Celebration at City Hall, Mayor Stanton’s State of the City Address, Arts Congress, Honor Health Night of Gold, In Celebration of Women I & II at Herberger Gallery, an Arizona Women’s Hall of Fame induction ceremony, and several ASU convocations. She’s read for the Phosphorescence Poetry Series, sponosored by The Emily Dickinson Museum, and she’s opened for U.S. Poet Laureate Natasha Tretheway.

RD has published three collections of poetry: The Book of Emergencies (Five Oaks Press 2014), The Philosophy of Unclean Things (Finishing Line Press 2017), and The Cleavage Planes of Southwest Minerals [A Love Story], winner of the 2017 Split Rock Review chapbook competition. Her fourth collection, Emily’s Advice to Girls in the New Millennium, is due out Fall 2025 from Finishing Line Press. She’s also a five-time Pushcart nominee.

RD is an Assistant Professor of Practice at the University of Arizona College of Medicine-Phoenix, where she serves as the faculty editor for the medical poetry journal, Grey Matter. She’s also the creator/curator of the Pharmacy of Poems in the Compassion Center at Banner-University Medical Center-Phoenix.

Her work as a medical humanist and medical poet has been featured on Poetry Daily, poets.org, at the annual conference of the Association of Writers/Writing Programs (AWP), on the TEDx stage, Arizona PBS, local NPR affiliates, national NPR podcasts, the University of Arizona College of Medicine (Phoenix), the Mayo Clinic (Phoenix), and elsewhere.