Rachael Lyon is a poet, essayist, and translator. Her chapbook, The Normal Heart and How It Works (2011), won the White Eagle Coffee Store Press Poetry Chapbook Award and was a finalist for the Black River Chapbook Competition. Her poetry has appeared in such journals as The Southern Review, The Hopkins Review, Crab Orchard Review, and The Midwest Quarterly, among others.

In addition to her own writing, Lyon translates poetry from German, for which she received a Fulbright grant to Vienna, Austria, in 2009-10. Her latest translation project, a full-length translation of contemporary poetry by Irmgard Löschner, in collaboration with the author, ein Baum voll perlgrauer Tauben (a tree full of pearl gray doves), was released in November 2018 from Verlag Berger.

Lyon is an Associate Teaching Professor of English at Penn State.