Tara Betts |
||||
|
BioTara Betts, writer/educator/performer, appeared on HBO's "Def Poetry Jam" and in the SouthWest VDay production of Eve Ensler's "Vagina Monologues" at Chicago's DuSable Museum. She also appeared in the Black Family Channel series "SPOKEN" with jessica Care moore. She was also one of the writers/performers in girlstory-an intergenerational, multicultural women's performance collective.After winning Guild Complex's Gwendolyn Brooks Open Mic Award, Tara published her collection of poems "Can I Hang?" She also represented Chicago twice at the National Poetry Slam. She has performed her work in Cuba, New York, the West Coast and throughout the Midwest at venues such as Arie Crown Theater, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Studio Museum of Harlem, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Bar 13, Yerba Buena Cultural Center, The Metro, The Hip Hop Theater Festival, Ladyfest Midwest, the Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago Cultural Center, poetry slams, conferences, several colleges, universities and numerous public, private and alternative schools. She has shared the stage with Patricia Smith, Rosellen Brown, Afaa Michael Weaver, Kwame Dawes, Luis Rodriguez, MC Lyte and Grammy-winner Jill Scott. Tara also co-hosted and organized the defunct women's performance space/open mic series Women OutLoud. Tara's work has appeared in Essence magazine, the Steppenwolf Theater production "Words on Fire," Obsidian III, Callaloo, Drum Voices Revue, Women's Studies Quarterly and Columbia Poetry Review. Her work has been anthologized in Gathering Ground: A Reader Celebrating Cave Canem's First Decade (University of Michigan Press), Taboo Haiku (Avisson 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) and Erotic Haiku (IBC Books), Hurricane Blues: How Katrina and Rita Ravaged a Nation (Southeast Missouri University Press). Her work will also appear in the upcoming anthologies Thomas Sayers Ellis' Quotes Community: Notes for Black Poets (University of Michigan Press), Wompology (Red Hen Press) and Home Girls Make Some Noise: Hip Hop Feminism (Parker Publishing LLC). In addition to her experiences with page and the stage, Tara Betts is a lecturer in creative writing at Rutgers University. She continues teaching and encouraging literacy by working with arts programs such as Urban Word, Cooper Union Saturday Program and Sadie Nash Leadership Program. In Chicago, she was an influential educator through Young Chicago Authors and the internationally-acclaimed Gallery 37. Tara co-founded GirlSpeak, a weekly writing/leadership workshop for young women. She has also conducted short-term workshops in schools, community centers, Ms. Foundation, City Girls (a substance abuse rehabilitation center for teen girls), Cook County Jail and Cook County Juvenile Detention Center and at Long Island University's Brooklyn campus. Tara, a Cave Canem graduate who recently received her MFA from New England College, has received residencies from Ragdale Foundation, Centrum and Caldera and an Illinois Arts Council Artist fellowship in New Performance Forms. Tara Betts is the author of "SWITCH." This title poem also appears on "New Skool Poetics" CD released on Chicago's naievete records. |
|||