Tess Gallagher

Poet, essayist, novelist, and playwright Tess Gallagher was born on July 21, 1943, in Port Angeles, Washington. She received both a BA and MA from the University of Washington, where she studied creative writing with Theodore Roethke, and an MFA from the University of Iowa.

Gallagher is the author of eleven books of poetry. Her first collection of poems, Instructions to the Double (Graywolf Press, 1976), won the 1976 Elliston Book Award for “best book of poetry published by a small press.” In 1984, she published Willingly (Graywolf Press), which consists of poems written to and about her third husband, writer Raymond Carver, who died in 1988. Other collections include Is, Is Not (Graywolf Press, 2019), winner of the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award; Dear Ghosts (Graywolf Press, 2006); My Black Horse: New and Selected Poems (Bloodaxe Books, 1995); Owl-Spirit Dwelling (Trask House Books, 1995); and Moon Crossing Bridge (Graywolf Press, 1992).

Gallagher’s prose collection, The Man from Kinvara: Selected Stories (Graywolf Press, 2009), is the basis for film episodes under development. She participated in the productions of Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) and Short Cuts, films centered on Carver’s stories.

About her work, the poet Hayden Carruth wrote, “Gallagher’s poems, beyond their delicacy of language, have a delicacy of perception, and the capacity to see oneself objectively as another person doing the things one really does, with clear affection and natural concern.”

Gallagher’s other honors include a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, two National Endowment for the Arts awards, and the Maxine Cushing Gray Award. She is the only American to have been honored with a lifetime achievement award for her poetry from Fondazione Roma, which she received in 2023. 

Gallagher has taught at St. Lawrence University, Kirkland College, the University of Montana, the University of Arizona, Syracuse University, Willamette University, Bucknell University, and Whitman College. She currently serves as the inaugural poet in residence at the Field Arts and Events Hall in Port Angeles and is a board member for the Friends of Roethke Foundation. She lives in Port Angeles and County Sligo, Ireland.