Born on August 20, 1948, to Canadian parents in San Diego, California, Heather McHugh was raised in Gloucester Point, Virginia. Her father was a marine biologist, and directed the marine biological laboratory on the York River. She entered Harvard University at the age of seventeen.

Her first collection of poems, Dangers: Poems, was published by Houghton Mifflin in 1977. Since then, she has published several acclaimed collections, most recently Upgraded to Serious (Copper Canyon Press, 2009); Eyeshot (Wesleyan University Press, 2004), which was shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize; The Father of Predicaments (2001); Hinge & Sign: Poems 1968-1993 (1994), a finalist for the National Book Award and named a "Notable Book of the Year" by the New York Times Book Review; Shades (1988); To the Quick (1987); and A World of Difference (Houghton Mifflin, 1981).

She is also the author of a collection of literary essays titled Broken English: Poetry and Partiality (1993), and three books of translation: Glottal Stop: Poems of Paul Celan (with Nikolai Popov, 2001), winner of the Griffin International Poetry Prize; Because the Sea is Black: Poems of Blaga Dimitrova (with Niko Boris, 1989); and D'après tout: Poems by Jean Follain (1981).

McHugh also edited the anthology New Voices: University and College Prizes (Academy of American Poets, 1999), and served as the 2007 guest editor for the Best American Poetry series.

In a 1999 interview, McHugh said, "If you're a poet smitten with English, you love it for its drive and not its drone. The rhythms of a language must be irresistible—while the humdrums of it have to be resisted. No linguistic habit is, per se, of interest—but ah! when the unsung (underlying) nun informs it—with a sensual twist or quick shape-shift! Well, that's the trick: the sudden unexpectedness inside the overknown."

Her honors include two grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Lila Wallace/Reader's Digest Award, a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship, and, in 2006, one of the first United States Artists awards. From 1999 to 2006 she served as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, and in 2000 was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2009, she was awarded the MacArthur Foundation "Genius Grant" for her work. She was the 2018 recipient of the Aiken Taylor Award for Modern American Poetry.

For over 20 years, she has served as a visiting faculty member in the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College, and since 1984 as Milliman Writer-in-Residence at the University of Washington in Seattle. From https://poets.org