Garrigue was an instructor of English literature at the University of Iowa (1942–43), Bard College (1951–52), Queens College (1952–53), The New School for Social Research (1955–56), the University of Connecticut (1960–61), and Smith College (1965-66). She also taught at the University of Washington, the University of California, Riverside, and Rhode Island College. She was a visiting poet at the University of Washington, Seattle, in 1970 and Poet-in-Residence at a number of colleges and universities, including the University of California, Riverside (1971).