About Tara

Tara Prakash is the 2025 National Youth Poet Laureate Runner-Up and the Youth Poet Laureate of the United States South. She also holds the titles of inaugural Maryland Youth Poet Laureate and 2024 Montgomery County Youth Poet Laureate and is the author of Memory Map (forthcoming with Finishing Line Press). A three-time National YoungArts winner and two-time Scholastic Art & Writing National Gold and Silver Medalist (as well as an American Voices Medalist), Tara has had her work recognized by the New York Times, Princeton University, the National Council of Teachers of English, and Narrative Magazine. Her work has appeared in Best American High School Writing, Blue Marble Review, and The Daphne Review, among others. She has performed at The Kennedy Center, the National Press Club, the Smithsonian Institution, and other venues.

 

An alumna of the Adroit Journal Summer Mentorship Program, the Iowa Young Writers’ Studio, the Kenyon Young Writers Workshop, and the Kelly Writers House Summer Workshop, Tara founded nonprofit Write to Right to teach creative writing to under-resourced youth.

 

In her free time, she can be found camping with her Scouts troop, sailing keelboats in weekend regattas, or hiking with her dog Nala. Tara is an incoming freshman at Princeton University.