Rachel Rose has won national awards for her poetry, fiction and non-fiction, including a 2014 Pushcart Prize. She has published poems, short stories and essays in Canada, the U.S., New Zealand and Japan. Her poetry collection, Song and Spectacle, won the 2013 Audre Lorde Poetry Prize in the U.S. and the Pat Lowther Award in Canada. In 2011, Rachel Rose and composer Leslie Uyeda were commissioned by the Queer Arts Festival to write the libretto for Canada's first lesbian opera, When the Sun Comes Out, which premiered in August 2013. Her latest book, The Dog Lover Unit, was published by St. Martin’s Press in 2017. She was recently a fellow at the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program.

Her legacy project as Poet Laureate was Sustenance: Writers from B.C. and Beyond on the Subject of Food (Anvil Press 2017). The collection brought together a diverse assortment of award-winning writers, side-by-side with bold new voices, celebrating all that is unique about Vancouver’s literary and culinary scene. A portion of sales from every book goes toward providing a refugee or low-income family with fresh, locally-grown produce.