Terry began writing poetry in earnest in 1999, inspired by her 5-year-old son’s fascination with trains. Since then she has published four books and more than 160 poems in literary magazines including Poet Lore, Rosebud, Passages North, The Florida Review, CALYX, Rattle, Slipstream, Harpur Palate, Connecticut Review, The Café Review and Pearl. She is looking for a publisher for her new chapbook, Tango.
Terry’s poem “Produce Man” won the 2008 Rita Dove Poetry Award, judged by Naomi Shihab Nye, and her pantoum “Rwandan Mother, 1994” won the 2009 Editors’ Choice Writecorner Press Poetry Prize. She has twice been a finalist for the Dogwood Poetry Prize, the William Stafford Award for Poetry and the Paumanok Poetry Award. Her poem “Infusion Fridays” was performed by an actor in The Pink Ribbon Project, a show featuring dance, drama and visual arts inspired by women battling breast cancer, in September 2011.
She has read her work at several Florida venues including the Miami Book Fair International, the Kerouac Festival in Orlando, The Casements cultural center in Ormond Beach and the St. Augustine Poetry Rendezvous. She was a featured poet at Niagara County Community College in New York. Terry has been involved in several collaborations with visual artists, and her photograph “Osprey on a Windy Day” was chosen for inclusion in Orlando magazine’s 2014 Paint the Town exhibition.
Terry's work has been published in Across Latitude & Language by Delhi Poetry Slam, a global anthology of poets celebrating diverse voices from around the world.