Tessa C. Berman is a poet and literary scholar from Virginia. She earned her BA in English Literature from the University of Virginia, where she co-curated the special collections exhibition Anne Spencer: I Am Here! and completed a thesis on poets and their avian emanations under Mark Edmundson. She also spent considerable time working as an auditory neuroscience researcher. Tessa’s poetry seeks to strike a balance between exploring the self and striving to illuminate intersubjective truths, and appears in Literary Matters, Strange Horizons, and Heavy Feather Review, among other places. When not reading or drafting, she is likely drinking hot cinnamon tea, wandering the Finger Lakes, or tending to her pet finch, Ruby. To learn more about her work, visit her website, tessacberman.com, or follow her on Instagram @t.c.berman.