TARA HARDY is a self-described “working class queer femme poet” and the founder of Bent, a writing institute for LGBTIQ people in Seattle, WA. A daughter of the United Auto Workers, and activist in the Battered Women’s Movement, she was elected Seattle’s Poet Populist and won Seattle Grand Slam Champion in 2002.  She’s competed on 4 Seattle Slam Teams, coached 2 teams, and most recently brought home the 4th place trophy from the 2008 Women of the World Poetry Slam.

Tara’s work focuses on issues of class, race, sexual orientation, gender identity, and family violence.  While focusing on personal narrative, she seeks to illuminate larger social frictions and the possibilities that arise within them.  Rather than deliver mere litany of experience, she wields story and poem as means for social change. Her work deepens our understanding of humanity and bridges cultural splits, among them: victim/perpetrator, gay/straight, urban/rural, coastal/middle, red/blue, poor/privileged.

Tara has toured the U.S. with Michelle Tea in the Stromboli's Island show, as well as with Oratrix, an all girl, all queer Seattle-based spoken word troupe.  She is a member of the Bullhorn Collective, and has performed with the Rolling Thunder Democracy Tour, Vancouver Folk Festival, Under the Volcano, Vancouver's Rock for Choice, various Sister Spit shows, the Washington Poet's Association's Burning Word, Portland's Youth Pride, San Francisco's Harvey Milk Institute, at the Minneapolis Orpheum Theater on the National Poetry Slam team finals stage.  Tara's work appears in Without a Net, Sex and Single Girls, Fusion, Blythe House Quarterly, Brazen, Switched on Gutenberg and her self-published chapbooks Vs, Rant-some, and Discourse.  Recordings of her work can be found on “Vox Populi Live” (the best of the Seattle Poetry Festival), the “Seattle Poetry Slam Live CD,” and her self-produced CD "Dirty River.".