Aly attended University of North Carolina, Converse College, and Univ.of Iowa Writer's Workshop. A native of North Carolina, for many years she lived on top of a mountain in Western North Carolina, with just the bears and foxes for company. She owned an antique store in North Carolina for many years, specializing in Southern antique quilts, pottery, furniture, and art and was also in the antique quilt business in London. Her work has appeared in The Iowa Review; An Anthology of Southern Poetry, Vol. 1, South Carolina; Still Home, an anthology; BayLeaf; Appalachian Review; The Raleigh, N.C. Sunday Reader; and she has won The DuBose & Dorothy Heyward Society Prize; the John Robert Doyle, Jr., prize; The Sandy Eubank Memorial Prize; The Forum Prize; the Marjorie Peale Prize; and the Archibald Rutledge Prize; and the grand prize in the Kennesaw, Georgia, poetry contest. She has given numerous readings in North and South Carolina. Much of her time now is spent hiking with her two beagles.