Born in Johannesburg, South Africa, to convert parents, Tessa Meyer Santiago was raised in Cape Town. She spent 1983 in Australia as a Rotary (International) scholar and attended BYU on Spencer W. Kimball and Parley Christensen Scholarships. She received her master of arts degree in English from BYU in 1992.
Tessa teaches critical/analytical, creative, and technical writing for both the English and the honors departments. She has won the Elsie C. Carrol Personal Essay Contest, the Human Rights Symposium Essay Contest, the Vera Mayhew Award, the David O. McKay Essay Contest, the BYU Studies Personal Essay Contest, and the Literature and Belief Essay Contest. She has presented papers at the Association for Mormon Letters Annual Conference, the Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association Annual Conference, the Literature and Belief Annual Symposium, and the Sidney B. Sperry Symposium.
During 1987–88 Tessa served in the Massachusetts Boston Mission. She has been a Relief Society counselor and president, a missionary prep teacher, a Cub Scout den leader, and a Young Women’s counselor. She also served as a member of the General Relief Society Board Writing Committee.
Committed to writing and encouraging personal essays, Tessa believes that “we, especially Mormon women, need to be more expressive in capturing the content and significance of the stories and lives we live.”
