Judith Catherine Green was born on 13 February 1936 in Perth, Western Australia. She attended the Ascot State School and Brisbane Girls' Grammar School. She won an Open Scholarship to the University of Queensland where she obtained First Class Honours in English. In 1965, she received her Master of Arts from Cambridge University. She met her first husband, Fabio Rodriguez while tutoring at Kingston University in Jamaica. They married in 1964 and divorced in 1981. In 1982 she married Thomas Shapcott. She published numerous volumes of poetry, some illustrated by her own woodcuts. From 1979 to 1982 she was poetry editor for Meanjin and from 1988 to 1997 a poetry editor with Penguin Australia. Judith Rodriguez has also co-written the play Poor Johanna with Robyn Archer and her libretto for the opera Lindy was performed at the Sydney Opera House in 2002. She is the recipient of numerous awards including the Christopher Brennan Award and in 1994 received the Order of Australia for services to literature. Rodriguez died on 22 November 2018.