(CNN)Wednesday night in the Bay Area, where I live, there was an earthquake. It roused me from a deep uneasy dream about a sea leviathan, and as I woke, I realized we were riding bareback on the skin of the earth. 

This winter, just after I'd written an op-ed for CNN about gun violence, I received a bunch of notes, mostly lovely ones, in my inbox. Some were unpleasant, and among them two really stood out to me -- one threatened my life, while another truly charming correspondent wrote: "Women like you should just shut up. We were great at enforcing the Second Amendment before you all had the right to vote."  Read more...

Poetry reviewer Tess Taylor shares three collections she says speak to different slices of American life in a way that reminds her of Walt Whitman.

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Article about Bullets Into Bells: Poets and Citizens Respond to Gun Violence (Beacon Press), and anthology in which Tess was included.

Tess addresses gun violence in a CNN Editorial.

(CNN) - When I was 12, in the sixth grade in El Cerrito, California, one of my classmates brought a gun to school. She was a bright fellow student -- flamboyant, funny, sometimes moody -- occasionally in trouble, fun to play kickball with. I still remember her throaty laugh. I also remember the awful day while we stood on the play yard, as she pulled a gun out of her backpack and pointed it at a group of sixth-grade girls, threatening to shoot.  Read more...

Tess Taylor | Queen's University Belfast Creative Writing Scholar Award (2016-17)

Michele Kennedy, Soprano and Emily Manzo, Pianist
Music by Aaron Siegel @apsiege
Poetry by Tess Taylor
Premiere at Scholes Studio, Brooklyn, NY June 2017