Alberta Skaggs earned an MFA in creative writing in 2001 from Southern Illinois University Carbondale, with Kent Haruf as the thesis director for her novel Vy’s Place. In 2005, she won Southern Illinois University Carbondale’s top teaching honor for term faculty. She wrote the biography Crossing the Mekong (a combination of poetry and prose) for and with Chan Sang San. It was published in 2017 by Saluki Publishing.