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) and has featured her story on its new CD release, “The Monti Presents: Hippo Award Winners, Volume 1”, out February, 2011.  Ms. Lake has also been named a 2010 Puffin Foundation Arts Grantee as well as a 2009-2010 Durham Arts Council Ella Fountain Pratt Emerging Artist Grantee, and is an alumna of both the 2010 Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop and the 2010 Kennedy Center Summer Playwriting Intensive.

In November and December 2011, Ms. Lake appears in the FIAT Alternate Routes Storytelling series, a commercial campaign on radio and online.

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 has recently relocated to beautiful Atlanta,GA.