Hilbert did not begin writing until after her father's death. By that time, she had thoroughly committed herself to the domestic heavy-lifting of many women in her generation, putting obligations as wife and mother before her own education or career. But Hilbert had long fostered an emerging ambition of her own by studying such diverse writers as Albert Camus, Sigmund Freud, Graham Greene, Omar Kayam, and Grace Metalious. She eventually completed an undergraduate degree in political science from California State University, Long Beach, as well as a graduate degree in psychotherapy from the California Family Study Center. In 1980, Hilbert began publishing poems in literary journals, and an editor at Event Horizon Press noticed her work, launching her debut collection, Mansions, in 1990. Her subsequent books include a fiction collection, Women Who Make Money and the Men Who Love Them, which won the Staple First Editions prize in England, and six other books of poetry: Deep Red, Feathers and Dust, Transforming Matter, Greatest Hits, Traveler in Paradise: New and Selected Poems, and Gravity: New & Selected Poems. Hilbert's writing is not easily slotted into a single tradition; she experiments with free-verse lyricism, formalism, and prose poetry. In more recent work, one can find elements of sardonic allegory, even surrealism. Long Beach poet and fiction writerGerald Locklin authored Two Novellas in collaboration with Hilbert and has since shared the lectern with her many times at readings in the U.S. and United Kingdom. He describes Hilbert's writing as “musical,” “imagistic,” and “much more poetic than most contemporary poetry without lapsing into the ‘pseudo-poetic’ or trite.” He also stresses that the trajectory of Hilbert’s career outside the traditional academy has been an unquestionable asset to her development as a writer: “She probably has more in common with the unselfconscious women writers of earlier generations than the more professionally or commercially driven women of our MFA generation.” In the past three years, Hilbert has experimented in other genres, including nonfiction, playwriting, and the novel. For PEN USA, she taught workshops for Emerging Voices poetry fellows. Hilbert's life and work since the tragic loss of her husband have become the subjects of an independent biopic, Grief Becomes Me: A Poet's Journey, produced and directed by award-winning filmmaker Christine Fugate. The first installment of the film premiered at the annual Kentucky Women Writers Conference in 2004.
