An award-winning poet and educator, Tara A. Elliott's poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Ninth Letter, Gargoyle, Gulf Stream, MER, One Art, Cimarron Review, 32 Poems, The Normal School, Birmingham Poetry Review, Cumberland River Review, The Rappahannock Review, Philadelphia Stories, and many other journals.  Executive director of Eastern Shore Writers Association and host of Thursdays with ESWA, a weekly craft-based Zoom series for writers, Tara is also the chair of the annual Bay to Ocean Writers Conference. 

She has served as the Poet-in-Residence for the Freeman Arts Pavilion, is a fellow of the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (VCCA), and has been awarded numerous grants from the Maryland State Arts Council, The Community Foundation of the Eastern Shore, MD Humanities, The Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation, Salisbury Wicomico Arts Council, and The Franklin P. & Arthur W. Perdue Foundation.  The 2018 recipient of Maryland Humanities' Christine D. Sarbanes Award, she was also twice awarded the Light of Literacy Award by Wicomico County Public Libraries: the 2016 Educator Luminary Award, and the 2020 Adult Luminary Award for Community Outreach.  In 2022, she was awarded an Independent Artist Award for Literature from the Maryland State Arts Council.

She lives on the Eastern Shore of Maryland where she teaches English to flourishing middle school writers.