Roberts was born November 7, 1961, in Charlotte, North Carolina. She received a BFA from Emerson College and an MFA from the University of Arizona.

Roberts is the winner of the 2009 Pearl Poetry Prize for her manuscript, Animal Magnetism. In 2010, she won the Washington Online Award for "Contributions to the DC Literary Community." In 2008, she was awarded an Independent Voice Award from the Capital BookFest. Roberts is the recipient of grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, and the Humanities Council of Washington. She has been awarded writer's residencies at seventeen Artist colonies across the United States, including the Science Museum of Minnesota, the Edward Albee Foundation, and the Luna Parc Atelier Foundation.

She is the founder of Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Editor of the anthology Full Moon On K Street: Poems About Washington DC (Plan B Press, 2010), and author of five books of poetry including, The Scientific Method (WordTech Editions), Fortune's Favor: Scott In Antarctica (Poetry Mutual Press), and Animal Magnetism (Pearl Editions). Her work has been published in numerous anthologies and literary journals throughout the US, and internationally. The Kimnama is a book-length poem that chronicles her experiences during a period of residence in India. Fortune's Favor: Scott In Antarctica is a book-length poem based on the journals of British Explorer Robert Falcon Scott, whose Terra Nova Expedition was the second to reach the South Pole in 1912.

Roberts has seen her work adapted to music by Arc of Ones, as well as by classical Composer Daron Aric Hagen. Several poems have been choreographed by Jane Franklin Dance Company and performed at various venues including the Kennedy Center Millennium Stage. Roberts' science and poetry workshops at the 2017 March for Science were featured in The New York Times Opinion page and the title poem of her book The Scientific Method was included at the march as part of "Science Stanzas," sponsored by the Wick Poetry Center at Kent State University.

Washington, D.C. is the source of much inspiration for Roberts. She has developed numerous tours for schools, community groups, and Big Read celebrations highlighting the literary and cultural history of the city. Roberts frequently leads walking tours of the Harlem Renaissance-era Writers in the greater U Street neighborhood. Roberts's research on Walt Whitman’s decade in residence of Washington, DC was featured in The Walt Whitman Quarterly Review, as well as being referenced in subsequent articles in The Washington Post and The Washington Times, features on radio essays on stations WAMU and WPFW, and on panels for Whitman conferences at Rutgers University, the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and at the annual Washington Historical Studies Conference. Roberts was the Coordinator of the city-wide festival in 2005, "DC Celebrates Whitman: 150 Years of Leaves of Grass." Roberts has presented “The Rise of DC’s Black Intelligentsia: Paul Laurence Dunbar and Alice Dunbar-Nelson in LeDroit Park” and “Henry Adams in Lafayette Square” at DC Historical Studies Conferences. Her projects have been supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, The Humanities Council of Washington, DC, the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, and the District of Columbia Public Library.