Tess Taylor: Acclaimed poet and academic

Acclaimed poet and academic Tess Taylor, born in El Cerrito, California, has authored four poetry volumes and a chapbook. She has taught at various universities and contributes to NPR and CNN, with works published in numerous prestigious journals.

By Douglas Wade, Attorney

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Table of Contents

1. Education and Early Life

2. Career

3. Personal Life of Tess Taylor

4. Fellowships and Awards

5. Books by Tess Taylor

American academic, poet, and NPR & CNN commentator Tess Taylor was born on 24^th October 1977.

Education and Early Life

California’s El Cerrito is where Tess Taylor was born/raised, and completed Berkeley High School. She graduated from Amherst College with a BA in English & Urban Studies, New York University with an MA in journalism, and Boston University with a master’s degree in Fine Arts (poetry & creative writing.)

Career

Four complete volumes of poetry plus a chapbook have been written by Tess Taylor.

Eavan Boland chose The Misremembered World, her chapbook, to receive the Poetry Society of America’s first chapbook fellowship.

Red Hen Press released The Forage House, her debut novel, in 2013. In this work, Taylor—a Jefferson descendant—deals with this ancestry. Taylor carried out studies at Thomas Jefferson’s main plantation, Monticello, over 2 summers in order to compile information for the publication of this work. She was funded by the International Centre for Jefferson Studies and the American Antiquarian Society.

Former US Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey said of The Forage House, “It is a bold and powerful work that offers testimony to the voyage of historical finding.” Going through artifacts, archives, and mementos. In order to uncover the clues that lead to her own past and provide a crucial connection to our common American past, Tess Taylor offers an analysis of what is and is not documented. What is present and explained pulls us strongly towards what is lacking; what appears whole here is not actually complete—something as jumbled and haunting as the language’s history.”

In her second collection, Work and Days, Taylor presents a calendric series of twenty-eight poems that map the year she spent in 2010 during the Amy Clampitt Fellowship program working on a tiny Berkshires farm. The New York Times named ‘Work and Days’ among the greatest poetry books of 2016.

Tess Taylor released Rift Zone and Last West: Roadsongs for Dorothea Lange in 2020. The Museum of Modern Art released Last West: Roadsongs for Dorothea Lange as a component of the Dorothea Lange: Words and Pictures exhibit. Taylor’s poetry collection, Rift Zone (Red Hen Press), delves into the history, present issues, and fractures in El Cerrito, her hometown, as well as other parts of California. The Boston Globe selected Rift Zone as among the greatest works of 2020.

The work of Tess Taylor has been widely published, showing up in journals and magazines like Harper’s Magazine, The New Yorker, Poetry, The Kenyon Review, Tin House, Travel + Leisure, Virginia Quarterly Review, and many more. She is the live poetry evaluator at All Things Considered (NPR) and regularly contributes to CNN.

Apart from her literary works, Taylor has been a professor of writing and literature at many universities in the United States and overseas. These universities include Queen’s University Belfast (Northern Ireland), UC Berkeley, Whittier College, Randolph College, and Ashland University.

Personal Life of Tess Taylor

Tess Taylor, her spouse, and their two kids reside in California (El Cerrito)

Fellowships and Awards

The first chapbook fellowship from the Poetry Society of America, 2003.
Amy Clampitt Fellowship, 2010.
2017 Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen’s University, Belfast; Distinguished Fulbright US Scholar.

Books by Tess Taylor

Rift Zone (2020, Red Hen Press)
Last West: Roadsongs for Dorothea Lange (2020, Museum of Modern Art, 2020)
Work & Days (2016, Red Hen Press)
The Forage House (2013, Red Hen Press)
The Misremembered World (2003, Poetry Society of America)

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