Tessa Wooldridge grew up in Melbourne and the central Victorian city of Bendigo. She undertook her secondary education at Methodist Ladies' College, Kew, and completed a Bachelor of Arts at the Australian National University. She later gained Graduate Diplomas in Education and in Library and Information Management at the University of Canberra, and a Master of Arts (Writing) through the University of New England.
Wooldridge has worked as a primary school teacher, researcher and editor. She has also been an indexer with AustLit (2001-2014) and its predecessor AUSTLIT (1994-2000). Together with Jane Rankine, Wooldridge was appointed an AustLit Emeritus Indexer in 2014.
Wooldridge's tanka have been published in a range of Australian and international journals and anthologies including Eucalypt: A Tanka Journal, Stylus Poetry Journal, Atlas Poetica and Take Five: Best Contemporary Tanka; her reviews have appeared in several Australian journals, primarily in Fiction Focus: New Titles for Teenagers and Reading Time. Wooldridge also writes the blog Thoughts from an Idle Hour, 'often, but not always, about books, writers and writing'. The relevant content from the blog is indexed on AustLit.
