​
​Born and raised in Wheeling, West Virginia, Aimee Pokwatka studied anthropology at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where she helped catalog a collection of archaic-period human skeletal remains. She received her MFA in creative writing from Syracuse University.
​
She has worked at Blockbuster Video, where she rewound and shrinkwrapped VHS tapes, and as a veterinary technician, where she expressed anal glands and once tended to a lion cub from the circus. She has also taught writing to students of all ages, and served as the editor of Salt Hill Journal and The Newtowner. She lives in New York with her family.