Colette’s short story collection Once Removed and Other Stories (University of Georgia Press) won the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction, the NYC Big Book Award for Short Story Collections, the IAN Outstanding Short Story Collection Award, and the Juror's Choice Award and the Short Stories Award from the National Idie Excellence Awards.  it was first runner up for the Eric Hoffer Short Story/Anthology Award and a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Grand Prize, the Eric Hoffer First Horizon Award, the IAN Outstanding Women's Fiction Award and the Balcones Fiction Prize, and was shortlisted for the William Saroyan International Prize for Fiction. Her stories and essays have appeared in Kenyon Review Online, Slice, Carve, Prairie Schooner, Colorado Review, Harvard Review, and elsewhere. In addition to the Flannery O'Connor Award and the NYC Big Book Award, she has won a Writers@Work [2] Fiction Prize, a Fugue Prose Award, a Glenna Luschei Prairie Schooner Award, a Reynolds Price Short Fiction Award, and a Truman Capote fellowship from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where she completed her MFA.

Colette has taught writing for 20 years and currently teaches at UCLA Extension Writers' Program as well as privately. She also cohosts the Literary Roadhouse Bookclub podcast. In addition, she is the Executive Director of The CineStory Foundation, a nonprofit mentoring organization that pairs emerging TV writers and screenwriters with entertainment industry professionals as mentors.