Her poetry makes an in-depth analysis of identity and nation as well as love, landscape and language. She mainly writes in free verse.

Frater graduated from the University of Glasgow with a first class honours degree in Celtic and French. She received a teaching qualification from Jordanhill College of Education (now part of the University of Strathclyde). In 1995, she was awarded a PhD from the University of Glasgow for her thesis on Scottish Gaelic women's poetry up to 1750.^[1] She lectures at Lews Castle College in Stornoway (UHI, University of the Highlands and Islands/Oilthigh na Gàidhealtachd agus nan Eilean), where she teaches on the Gaelic-medium degree courses, and is Programme Leader for the BAH Gaelic Scotland.

Her poems are included in anthologies of Scottish Gaelic poetry: Whyte 1991a, Kerrigan 1991, Stephen 1993, O'Rourke 1994, Crowe 1997, Black 1999, McMillan and Byrne 2005 and MacNeil 2011.^{[citation needed]} She published in magazines such as Chapman and Verse. Her first anthology, 'Fo'n t-Slige' (Under the Shell) was published in 1995, and her second collection, 'Cridhe Creige' in 2017.

In March 2016, a selection of ten poems, Anns a’ Chànan Chùbhraidh/En la lengua fragante was premiered by her and Miguel Teruel, a translator, in a public reading at the University of Valencia, Spain. The poems were read in Scottish Gaelic by the poet and the Spanish version by Teruel's translation.^{[citation needed]}