Tara Lake, a wordsmith, performer, and teacher, has written widely, and her popular work has been published in outlets such as BET.com, Washington Blade/Southern Voice, and her quirky blog at www.taralake.blogspot.com.  As an artist, Tara has also performed throughout the country, and her repertoire includes classical theatre, storytelling, and vocal jazz performance.  She recently wrapped up a three-year stint leading an African American Studies program at a small Los-Angeles area college, a move that’s allowed her to pursue several writing projects and continue the eventful work of merging her creative and academic interests.  Currently, she can be found writing feverishly, leading community education projects, developing productions for the stage, writing feverishly, working in youth literacy, hosting a podcast, writing feverishly, researching aspects of black performance culture of the early 20th Century, developing new courses, directing a documentary, writing feverishly, building pathways to understanding around race/gender/sexuality/class, and Writing Feverishly.

Durham’s The Monti storytelling project nominated Ms. Lake for a Hippo Award in its Best Overall Story category (2009). .  Ms. Lake has recently been honored as the Astraea Lesbian Writers Fund Finalist in the Fiction Category for 2009-2010 and has also been named a 2010 Puffin Foundation Arts Grantee. Tara Lake is a 2009-2010 Durham Arts Council Ella Fountain Pratt, an Emerging Artist Grantee, and an alumna of both the 2010 Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop and the 2010    Kennedy Center Summer Playwriting Intensive.

Tara Lake holds a B.A. in English from Florida A&M University and an M.A. in African American Studies from the University of California, Los Angeles. She lives in beautiful Durham, NC.