Tara Betts is a lecturer in creative writing at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, NJ.  Tara's work has appeared in Essence, the Steppenwolf Theater production "Words on Fire," Obsidian III, Callaloo, Drum Voices Revue, WSQ and Columbia Poetry Review. Her work has been anthologized in Gathering Ground: A Reader Celebrating Cave Canem's First Decade (University of Michigan Press), Bum Rush the Page (Three Rivers Press), The Spoken Word Revolution (Sourcebooks), Power Lines (Tia Chucha Press), Poetry Slam (Manic D Press), Black Writing from Chicago: In the World, Not of It? (Southern Illinois University Press), ROLE CALL (Third World Press), These Hands I Know (Sarabande), Best Black Women's Erotica 2 (Cleis Press), Hurricane Blues: How Katrina and Rita Ravaged a Nation (Southeast Missouri University Press), Home Girls Make Some Noise: Hip Hop Feminism (Parker Publishing), Letters to the World (Red Hen Press) and Fingernails Across a Chalkboard (Third World Press). Her work will appear in Thomas Sayers Ellis' Breakfast and Blackfist: Notes for Black Poets (University of Michigan Press) and Tembu Tupu (Africa World Press). A Cave Canem graduate, Tara received her MFA in Poetry from New England College and residencies from Ragdale Foundation, Centrum and Caldera and an Illinois Arts Council Artist fellowship.