Open Mic, Featured Poet and the Slam:Email info@seattlepoetryslam.org for more info

Tara Hardy is the working-class queer femme poet who writes and teaches in Seattle, Washington. She is the founder and current creative director of Bent, a writing institute for LGBTIQ people based in Seattle. In 2002, she was elected by the people and named by the city council as Seattle’s Poet Populist, or poet of the people, and she won the Seattle Grand Slam Champion title in the same year. She holds an MFA from Vermont College in fiction writing, and an MSW from the University of Michigan in community organizing. Tara is a daughter of the United Auto Workers, and worked in the Battered Women’s Movement for 15 years. She was a member of the Bullhorn Collective, and has performed with the Rolling Thunder Democracy Tour, Vancouver’s Rock for Choice, various Sister Spit shows, the Washington Poet’s Association’s Burning Word festival, Portland’s Youth Pride, San Francisco’s Harvey Milk Institute, and at the Minneapolis Orpheum Theater on the National Poetry Slam team finals stage.

Most recently, Tara began slamming again, bringing fire to the stage as only she can. She competed as a member of the 2007 Seattle National Slam Team and also threw down against the top female poets in Seattle to be the offical rep at the 1st ever Women of the World Poetry Slam. Tara says that the tournament was an experience that changed her life - oh and she also walked away with a 4th place trophy!

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 and Rant-some. 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.