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Beth Singer Bentley was born on October 7, 1921 in St. Paul. She was educated at the University of Minnesota (B.A., 1943) and received an M.F.A. in Creative Writing and English from the University of Michigan (1946). She won the Hopwood Award (for fiction) in 1948 while continuing graduate studies at Michigan. She moved to Seattle in 1952, where she married her fiance George Nelson Bentley, newly hired as a UW assistant professor.. Beth Bentley taught in the Northwest and elsewhere for over thirty years, including the course "Writing Contemporary Poetry" at the University of Washington from 1980 to 1992. She also founded and directed the Northwest Poets' Reading Series at the Seattle Public Library, where it ran from 1960 to 1974. Her poetry has been widely published in journals and anthologies, including The New Yorker, Poetry, The Atlantic, Paris Review, Poetry, The Nation, Saturday Review, and The Sewanee Review.

Beth Bentley's poetry collections include: Little Fires, Cune Press, 1998; The Purely Visible, SeaPen Press, 1980; Philosophical Investigations, SeaPen Press, 1977; Country of Resemblances, Ohio University Press, 1976; Field of Snow, Gemini Press, Seattle, 1973; Phone Calls From the Dead, Ohio University Press, 1972. Her awards and honors include: Montalvo Award, 1987; Washington State Governor's Award for Phone Calls From the Dead, and for Country of Resemblances; Northwest Bookseller's Award for Phone Calls From the Dead; National Endowment of the Arts fellowship, 1976/77.

Beth Bentley selected and edited The Selected Poems of Hazel Hall, published by Ahsahta Press. She has translated a number of contemporary French poets, which were published both in the U.S. and in Canada. She was a fellow of the NEA in 1978 and that same year she and her husband Nelson Bentley were invited to read at the Library of Congress.