Franco's recent collection, The Accidental was published with the University of Arkansas Press and was awarded the 2019 CantoMundo Poetry Prize. NBC Latino listed The Accidental among "the best Latino books in 2019." In selecting the book for the prize, Texas Poet Laureate, Emmy Pérez, writes: "These extraordinary poems document a consciousness of being, in neplanta, where the narrator's abiding love for family and humanity unfurls in inquiry from estrangement, loss, and witness. Franco's gift is in philosophizing memory and the present, in creating multiple, intersecting worlds that span time and geographies. The work is a reminder that many of us who live away from where we were raised remain deeply connected to the land and memories of loved ones despite circumstances that would separate us. I cried out loud when I finished reading the book." 

Franco's poems have been published with the Academy of American Poets, the Poets.org Poem-a-Day series, and the Poetry Foundation. Her writing appears widely in print and online journals such as 32 Poems, Agni, America, Beloit Poetry Journal, Black Warrior Review, Chiricú, Copper Nickel, Crazyhorse, Diagram, Image, The Georgia Review, Los Angeles Review, Mentor & Muse, Narrative, Poetry, Prairie Schooner, Quarterly West, Seneca Review, Tahoma Literary Review, West Branch, and Zone 3. 

Her work is also anthologized in A Best of Fence: the First Nine Years; The Wind Shifts: New Latino Poetry; Camino del Sol: Fifteen Years of Latina and Latino Writing; and The Other Latin@: Writing Against a Singular Identity. 

Franco's honors include residencies and fellowships with Casa Libre en la Solana, the Santa Fe Writers’ Conference, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and PINTURA:PALABRA, sponsored by Letras Latinas, Institute for Latino Studies, University of Notre Dame.  She was invited to teach for Image Journal’s 2017 and 2018 Glen Workshop, and invited as a presenting author to lead a master class and poetry workshop for the 2020 Tucson Festival of Books. She served as art editor, gratefully, at Pilgrimage Magazine for many years.

At Knox College, Franco teaches poetry writing, 18th & 19th-century British literature, Gothic literature, Modern and contemporary poetry, poetry translation, Borderland literature, and literary theory. In addition, she teaches several interdisciplinary courses in literature and religious studies.

She keeps an online collection of photographs documenting her travels between Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Texas—where her family lives—and Illinois, where she and her husband live and work most of the year. News and other updates about her work can be found at ginafrancopoetry.com.