Frances Payne Adler's book of poems, Raising The Tents, appeared from Calyx Books in 1993, and her poems have been published in Women's Review of Books, CALYX, A Journal of Art and Literature by Women, Exquisite Corpse, Centennial Review, Bridges, Hayden's Ferry Review, Pacific Review, among others, and in the anthology, Blood to Remember: American Poets on the Holocaust (Texas Tech University Press, 1991). She is co-author with photographer Kira Corser of Struggle To Be Borne (San Diego State University Press, 1988) and When the Bough Breaks: Pregnancy and the Legacy of Addiction (New Sage Press, 1993). These projects, in addition to Home Street Home (1984) and A Matriot's Dream: Health Care for All (1993), are collaborative poetry-photography exhibitions that have been displayed nationally. Adler received grant awards for these collaborative projects from the James Irvine Foundation, The National Endowment for the Arts, the March of Dimes, the Monterey Arts Commission, Las Patronas, the San Diego Community Foundation, and the Copley Foundation.

Poet, teacher and social action artist, Adler was born in Montreal, Quebec, and moved to the United States in 1975. She teaches in the Department of English at the University of San Diego (California). She received an M.A. and B.A. from San Diego State University, and an M.F.A. from Arizona State University. Adler's awards include the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation Award for Artist Residency in Taos, New Mexico; California Sate Senate Committee Award for artistic and social collaboration; Martha Scott Trimble Poetry Award finalist, Colorado Review; National Council of Jewish Women, Los Angeles Chapter, Rose Kreisman Scholarship; and Regents' Scholarship, Arizona State University. Raising the Tents was a finalist in the 1993 Western States Arts Federation Book Awards.