Tess Clarkson is a writer, speaker and teacher based in the Midwest.
For fifteen years in New York, Tess worked as an attorney, regulating financial markets and defending brokers and financial institutions. She earned her J.D. from Fordham University School of Law, received her B.A. from Loyola University Chicago, was a creative-nonfiction fellow at the City College of New York Writers’ Institute, and studied creative writing at The New School.
Before practicing law, Tess competed as an Irish dancer throughout the United States, Canada, and Ireland. During her initial first year at Fordham, she was offered a spot in the Irish dance chorus of Michael Flatley’s Lord of the Dance and put her academic plans on hold to join the cast. While touring North America and after performing in London for Flatley, Tess earned the role of understudy for “Morrighan, the Temptress.” Tess later returned to New York to resume studying law and was offered a place as an Irish dancer in the Broadway production of Riverdance and in promotional events for the show.
Tess teaches astrology, mediation and yoga, and leads a local end-of-life doula collective. Tess trained as an end-of-life doula through the Open Center in New York and is certified through Doulagivers, and for years, she served as a hospice volunteer. She is an avid traveler and a yogi (200-hour yoga teacher certified). She is certified as an astrologer (I.S.A.R.) and a constant student, especially of spirituality. She was a member of The Writers Room in Manhattan. She’s working on a grief gift book and is querying her first memoir.
Tess grew up in St. Louis County, Missouri. After two decades of living in Manhattan and Brooklyn, she returned to her home state to start a life in suburbia with her husband and their dogs.
