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Teresa White was born in Seattle, Washington, the daughter of decorated World War II hero and renowned civil engineer James Blake, and Molly Gilliland Blake, a Shakespearian scholar who filled her children's lives with music, and literature, and encouraged their literary and artistic activities at every turn. Teresa traces her love of writing to that early exposure and began to write poetry at the age of twelve. Teresa resides in Spokane, Washington, with her husband Rob, and has one daughter and three grandchildren. Her first book of poetry, In What Furnace, was published by Two Steps Publishing Company in 1997. She was nominated in 1999 for a Pushcart Prize by the Melic Review for her poem Desire, and again in 2007 by Mannequin Envy for her poem Doing Jack. She was also a 2008 Pulitzer competitor for her book of poetry, Gardenias for a Beast.Many of Teresa's poems are autobiographical, filled with the richly intense influence of her family and diverse experiences of her childhood. She describes the process of writing based on experience in an essay entitled "Writing Autobiographical Poetry" which has been used in several poetry workshops. "Teresa White's poems are virtuous in sense, sound, figure, and tone, attending the world directly, passionately, with the moral scrutiny only a scrupulous sense of aesthetics can bring to bear." |