Tara Betts

"Poets must embrace what makes them part of the global community, but they must also understand the everyday life of those who never leave the block."

TARA BETTS is a mixed-race award-winning poet, author and scholar of African American and white French descent. She holds a Ph.D. in English from Binghamton University, and an MFA in creative writing from New England College. She is the author of Break the Habit (2016), Arc and Hue (2009) and the libretto, The Greatest: An Homage to Muhammad Ali (2010). She is the co-editor of The Beiging of America, Personal Narratives about Being Mixed Race in the Twenty-First Century (2017) and editor of Adventures in Black and White (2018). Betts' work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including POETRY, Ninth Letter, Crab Orchard Review, Essence, Nylon, American Poetry Review, Gathering Ground, Bum Rush the Page, Villanelles, the Spoken Word Revolution anthologies, The Break Beat Poets, Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements, and GHOST FISHING: An Eco-Justice Poetry Anthology. A Cave Canem graduate, she has held residencies from the Ragdale Foundation, Centrum and Caldera, and was awarded an Illinois Arts Council Artist fellowship. Betts is currently a teacher and independent scholar in Chicago.

Quote: "Tara Betts Interview with Nicole Sealey," Mosaic Literary Magazine, June 5, 2011.