Sandra M. Gilbert has earned acclaim as a literary critic and poet. Coauthor of the landmark critcal work The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination, Gilbert and Gubar have also produced a three volume series of feminist criticism entitled No Man's Land: The Place of the Woman Writer in the Twentieth Century and co-edited The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women (1995). In addition to authoring five books of poems, including her most recent volume Ghost Volcano (W.W. Norton & Co., 1995), Gilbert has published a prose memoir, Wrongful Death: A Medical Tragedy, in which she offers both a bitter indictment of medical malpractice and a tender eulogy for her husband of over thirty years. Other recent works by Gilbert include The House is Made of Poetry: The Art of Ruth Stone (Southern Illinois University Press, 1996) edited with Wendy Barker.

Gilbert's many awards and honors include the National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship (1980-81), Rockefeller Foundation fellowship(1982), Guggenheim fellowship (1983), Woman of the Year Award, Ms. magazine (1986), University of California-Davis Humanities Institute fellowship(1987-88), Charity Randall Award, International Poetry Foundation(1990), and the University of California President's fellowship (1991-92).

Gilbert is currently professor of English at the University of California, Davis.