Tess Taylor

Tess Taylor is the author of five acclaimed collections of poetry. The San Francisco Chronicle hailed Taylor’s first book, The Forage House, as “stunning.” Critic Stephanie Burt called Work & Days, her second book “our moment’s Georgic” and it was named one of the 10 best books of poetry of 2016 by The New York Times. In spring 2020 she published two books of poems: Last West, part of Dorothea Lange: Words & Pictures, at the MoMA. Rift Zone, from Red Hen Press, was named one of the best books of 2020 by The Boston Globe. Taylor’s poetry and nonfiction appear widely. She has served as the Distinguished Fulbright US Scholar at the Seamus Heaney Centre in Queen’s University in Belfast, Northern Ireland and the Anne Spencer Poet-in-Residence at Randolph College. Taylor has also been the on-air poetry reviewer for NPR’s All Things Considered for over a decade. Taylor is currently on the faculty of Ashland University’s Low-Res MFA Creative Writing Program. She grew up and lives in El Cerrito, California.