Tessa Carman is a writer and teacher who lives with her husband Charles and four children on their soon-to-be-six-acres in Virginia. She teaches literature and her essays and poetry have been published in Front Porch Republic, Fare Forward, Mere Orthodoxy, Plough, The Lamp, and elsewhere. Her family roots are in northern Minnesota, where her father’s crowded bookshelves, her grandfather’s 400-acre farm, and the long, cold winters were some of her first tutors.