Born and raised in South Bend, Indiana, Tess holds a B.A. in English with an Honor’s Concentration in Creative Writing from the University of Notre Dame. After graduating in 2015, she began an MFA in Creative Writing from NYU, where she was a Lillian Vernon Fellow. After earning her MFA, Tess worked alongside her former professor Jonathan Safran Foer, providing research and writing for his book of nonfiction about the climate crisis. We Are the Weather was published by FSG in 2019.

As a freelance writer, editor, and research assistant, Tess’s experience also includes documenting the history of the Notre Dame Center for Social Concerns; contributing a history of Westside, Atlanta to an urban revitalization plan by Thadani Architects + Urbanists; creating science content for the American Museum of Natural History; editing Bruce Rits Gilbert’s debut book, John Prine, One Song at a Time, a tribute to the folk musician written in the wake of Prine’s death from the novel coronavirus; and working as a fact-checker on Mysteries of Mental Illness, a PBS docuseries about the history of psychiatry in America.

In 2021, the publishing houses Knopf (North America), Éditions Gallmeister (France), Guanda (Italy), and Kiepenheuer & Witsch (Germany) preempted Tess’s debut novel The Rabbit Hutch, along with her sophomore novel Honeydew.

Recommended Books:



Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Associate Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro as World Literature, is under contract with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers.

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