upcoming events

Last West: Roadsongs for dorothea west - FALL 2026 SEASON

Sept 10, 2026 — On the Road with Last West at Marin Theatre
A rare chance to see Last West in the making. Join playwright Tess Taylor, director Ciera Eis, and the creative team for an open developmental workshop— an intimate evening inside the rehearsal process as the production prepares for its fall run. RSVP required.

Oct 16, 2026 — The Archive Comes Alive
How does an archive become a poem — and that poem become a play? Poet and playwright Tess Taylor joins Ken Light, Reva and David Logan Professor of Photojournalism at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism, for an evening conversation about documentary poetry, photography, and the making of Last West. Set against a video installation drawn from Lange’s California archive — including her newly released Death of a Valley photographs — Taylor and Light explore what it means to carry images and testimony across ninety years. Their conversation ranges across the documentary tradition they share: the ethics of looking, the translation between image and word, and what Lange’s vision offers and asks of artists working now. A reception follows.

  • Location: UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, Northgate Hall

  • Time: 5:30–8:30pm

  • More info: Free and open to the public

Oct 17, 2026 — Gallery Chats
Drop into OMCA for pop-up gallery teasers: short live scenes from Last West performed among Lange’s own photographs. A chance to encounter the play in the very archive that inspired it.

  • Location: Oakland Museum of California (OMCA)

  • Time: 1–3pm

  • More info: Accessible with museum admission

Oct 18, 2026 — Spotlight Sundays
Experience the full production. Five actors, Lange’s own words, and a stunning projected backdrop of her photographs — two performances in OMCA’s theater. A book signing with Tess Taylor follows the 3pm performance.

  • Location: Oakland Museum of California (OMCA)

  • Times: 1–2:10pm and 3–4:10pm. With museum admission.

  • More info / RSVP: museumca.org/recurring-events/

Oct 22, 2026 — Daring to Look: An Evening with Dorothea Lange's California
What does it mean to dare look at California — then and now? Poet and playwright Tess Taylor joins Marin Theatre Company Artistic Director Lance Gardner for an evening of conversation, readings, and a preview of Last West as it prepares for its full Marin run.

Learn more about Last West

upcoming COURSES/TALKS

CLASSIC EIGHT: A Workshop for All Levels
Mondays, 4:30–6:30 PM PST | September 14 – November 2
Sep 14, 21, 28 | Oct 5, 26 | Nov 2 | Six sessions | $450 | Limited to 8

Born in 2000 with the support of legendary poet Ellen Bass, this workshop has been going strong for six years — intimate, rigorous, alive. We set intentions. We write new poems and learn from ones we already love. We make friends and colleagues. We persevere, resist, thrive, and go deep.

A space for poets at every level — beginners finding their footing and seasoned writers pushing further. Expect generative prompts, close reading, honest conversation, and the particular energy that only a small, committed group can make. True fact: a couple that met in this class got married. Others have gone on to MFAs or published books with poems we worked on together.

$450 for the series. Register early by CONTACTING TESS — it fills fast.


STAGING THE POEM: Voice, Scene, and the Inevitable Turn
Tuesdays, 6:00–8:30 PM ET | September 15 – October 6
Sep 15, 22, 29 | Oct 6 | Four sessions | $850 | Limited to 10
Online via zoom. register here

Poems are not plays — but the best ones invite you into an intense private theater. Someone or something is speaking. Someone or something is being spoken to. Then: the world shifts or breaks open or changes. And it all unfolds on the medium of breath.

In this four-week workshop, we'll turn the lenses drama onto our own drafts and the poems we love: Who holds the stage? Where does the scene take place? Where is the hinge, the turn — that moment where the poem tips toward its surprising but inevitable ending? We'll use these questions not just to read more sharply but to write more boldly, finding in the logic of staging a new set of levers for generating and revising poems.

Expect close reading, generative exercises, and lively conversation about how poems earn their endings. Note: Tess's verse-play Last West is being performed this fall — an added lens for thinking about where poetry and theater meet.

Geared toward poets with some experience. Come ready to read, edit, write, and share.

STEAL, WIELD, WILD, TRANSFORM: A Workshop in Generative Reading
Wednesday, October 1 | 4:00–5:15 PM PST | $25
Part of The Poetry Society of New York's Weekly Virtual Workshop Series | register here

This is a class in remixing. Poems often begin in other poems, texts in other texts. In this one-hour class we'll ask how to read deeply but also generatively — finding new pathways to our own poems in the texts we love and argue with. Come prepared with a short favorite poem and a willingness to take risks, and be ready, as T.S. Eliot once put it, to steal like an artist.


ASSEMBLING THE MANUSCRIPT: Break Open and Find Your Book
Tuesdays, 4:30–6:30 PM PST | October 13 – December 1
Oct 13, 20, 27 | Nov 10, 17 | Dec 1 | Six sessions | $450

You have poems. Maybe many. But how do you find the book inside them — the logic of assembly, the arc, the shape that makes a collection more than the sum of its parts?

In this six-week workshop, we'll think hard about how poets listen to their own work: how to recognize the forces and forms that are emerging, how to write strategically into the gaps, and how to move from a pile of good poems to a coherent, resonant manuscript. We'll read collections that model different logics of assembly, generate new material, edit what we have, and build actionable strategies for dreaming the book into being.

Come with poems and questions. Leave with a clearer vision of the book you're making.

Open to anyone ready to take risks toward a manuscript. Intermediate and advanced. Register by contacting tess.


NOW, THEN: THE ART OF TIME TRAVEL IN POETRY
Saturday, November 8 | 12:00–2:00 PM PST | $75
PART OF THE Conscious Writers Collective SERIES | register here

Time is a poet's most elastic material. In this two-hour workshop, we'll explore how poems move through time — leaping backward into memory, pressing into the present moment, reaching toward an imagined future — and how the syntax and structure of a poem can perform that motion rather than merely describe it.

How do you write a poem that holds two moments at once? How do you use tense, white space, and line breaks to signal a shift in time without losing the reader? How do you reclaim a past moment on the page without flattening it — keeping it alive, unresolved, strange?

We'll read poems that are masterful time travelers, study their moves, and then make some of our own. Come ready to write, to leap, and to discover what happens when past and present collide on the page.

This workshop is part of the Conscious Writers Collective series. No experience necessary — just curiosity and a willingness to explore how poets play with time.


POETS FOR SCIENCE GATHERING
November 12-14 | Poets for Science Gathering | $150-275
Kent State University, Wick Poetry Center, Kent Ohio | REGISTER HERE

TESS IS moderating a panel called Poetry as Translation: Telling Science Stories for a Wider World, which will include Charlotte Pence and Marcella Sulak.


OFFICE HOURS & PRIVATE LESSONS
Mondays, 2:00–4:00 PM PST | $125/hour

One poem. A manuscript. A book review. Grad school questions. Whatever you're working on, office hours are a place to dig in together. I'm available Mondays for private manuscript consultations and one-on-one lessons — and there's some flexibility beyond those hours, so reach out if you need to find another time. It's a genuine joy to shape work alongside writers.

Ongoing private lessons are available in blocks of four hours. Cancellation requires 24 hours notice; unless there's a compelling reason, the fee is still due.

This is a space of great writerly joy — and a few policies worth naming.

Payment is due at sign-up. Should you need to cancel, the fee will be retained unless your spot can be filled. If it is filled, you'll receive a full refund minus $100 to cover the work of finding a new student.

For private lessons, cancellation must be no later than 24 hours in advance. Unless there's a good reason, the fee is still due.


COMING 2027 - COME BITE. CONTACT TESS FOR READINGS IN 2027.