About Tara

Tara Prakash is the 2025 National Youth Poet Laureate Runner-Up and the Youth Poet Laureate of the United States South. A Pushcart Prize nominee and the author of Memory Map (Finishing Line Press), Tara is a three-time National YoungArts winner and two-time Scholastic Art & Writing National Gold and Silver Medalist (as well as an American Voices Medalist). Her work has been recognized by the New York Times, Princeton University, the National Council of Teachers of English, and Narrative magazine, and has appeared in Best American High School Writing, Blue Marble Review, and The Kathmandu Post, among others. She has performed at The Kennedy Center, the National Press Club, the Smithsonian Institution, and other venues.​

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In her free time, Tara can be found trekking (she recently completed the Camino de Santiago hike through Spain), camping with her Scouts troop (where she is an Eagle Scout), or playing ping-pong with her older brother.

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Tara is an incoming freshman at Princeton University.