Tina Rapp

I'm an essayist, poet, and fiction writer who is drawn to explore the intersections of a deeply divided America. I write frequently about culture, politics, and family matters.

I grew up in rural northern New York state on the shores of Lake Ontario near the U.S.-Canadian border. My upbringing gave me a firsthand look at a wide range of lifestyles, from wealthy summer people who vacationed in my tiny town to year-round friends who lived in poverty. My hardworking, ingenious parents never went to college. They also made sure my sister and I did.

My themes often include the dichotomy that is America: rich and poor; environmentalists and capitalists; progressives and the conservative right. My writing is strongly influenced by the remote and beautiful landscape of my youth and is marked by plain-style language, a strong sense of place, and empathy for those who struggle in the face of adversity.

My work has appeared in such venues as New Hampshire Public Radio, Yankee Magazine books, The Wall Street Journal (Student Edition), Concrete Wolf, Post Magazine, Adanna Literary Journal, and Willow Review for which I received the Willow Review Award for poetry for 2015. 

I served as managing editor and poetry editor of Shadow and Light – A Literary Anthology on Memory. I also served as an editor of Smoky Quartz, an online literary journal. 

I completed a one-month writing residency in 2015 at the Santa Fe Art Institute, where I worked on my first novel.

I have a bachelors of science degree with a major in mathematics and a minor in economics from the State University of New York (SUNY) Cortland. I have a master’s degree in business administration from Syracuse University, which I attended on a graduate fellowship. 

My commercial work includes writing a wide variety of web and print communications for major brands, often with a strong focus on technology. These include Meta (Facebook), Airbnb, IBM, Kronos, Avid Technology, Sophos Software, Leopard (a division of Ogilvy), Garnet Hill, and Kennedy Information, among others. My business writing has been favorably reviewed in The New York Times and InfoWorld. I also received three national awards for newsletter writing and editing from the Society for Technical Communication.