Tara Lake is a Scholar-Artist, Performer and Historian.

An interdisciplinary Teacher, Researcher and Creative, Tara Lake has a background in History, Literature, African American Studies and the Performing Arts.  As a Soprano & Storyteller, she elevates the work of African American composers and Arrangers and the experiences of African America communities - Performing concerts that welcome communities of all backgrounds.  In the classroom - and in the virtual classroom - Tara teaches American History & Cultural Studies in college and corporate settings, and also leads workshops in elementary and high schools.

Tara recently wrapped of a five-year stint teaching Africana Studies  for the Africana Studies program at Eastern Washington University program and formerly served as an Adjunct Professor of History at Atlanta Metropolitan State College and an Assistant Professor of African American Studies at Los Angeles Valley College. She is also founder of the AfroSouthern Education Project.

Tara also conducts research on African American history of the 19th and 20th centuries, as well as performance and literary culture.  As an artist, Tara has performed around the country, and her repertoire includes classical theatre, storytelling, and vocal jazz and classical voice performance. Scholar-artistry is critical to Tara’s work, and she utilizes performance to illuminate historical and cultural concepts. Currently, she can be found teaching amazing students online and “on the ground,” leading community education projects, podcasting, developing productions for the stage, working in youth literacy, writing historical fiction, and researching black performance culture of the early Twentieth Century.

At the center of her work are her enduring passions: African American Folk Cultures of the South, African American Music of the Nineteenth Century & Early Twentieth Century, and Intersectional Identity Constructs among Multi-Ethnic Communities and on the margins. An “old-school” teacher, Tara believes in every motivated student’s right to comprehensive English Language Literacy. Check out Tara’s Projects or Education Experience.

Since December 2012, Tara has performed “The Christmas Spirituals Project,” a classical voice and storytelling concert dramatizing the folk history of Christmas in the African American South. Since its inception in conjunction with the AfroSouthern Education Project, the concert has been performed at several churches and community sites, including First Lutheran Church in Cincinnati, Greater Smith Chapel A.M.E. Church and Greater Turner Chapel A.M.E. church, both in Atlanta.  As Vice Chair and Acting Chair of the East Point (GA) Cultural Arts Commission, Tara headed up the East Point Cultural Arts Festival in June 2012. Also in Atlanta, she was featured as “Ruth” in the Center for Puppetry Art’s world premiere play, Ruth and the Green Book, based on author Calvin Alexander Ramsey’s fictional exploration of the role of the historic “Green Book” in Black road travel during the Jim Crow Era. She also undertook the role of “Old Maple” in Old Maple, My Everlasting Friend, an environmental justice play for youth, in the Young Voices New Visions Festival - Alliance Theatre, Atlanta. Keep up with Tara’s Performances & Events here.

Tara has appeared in the FIAT Alternate Routes Storytelling Series, a multimedia commercial campaign along with several short films.  In “Jaded”, a short film that strikes back of the epidemic of child sex trafficking in Atlanta, she portrayed the mother of an abducted daughter.  The Monti storytelling project (Durham, NC) nominated Ms. Lake for a Hippo Award in its Best Overall Story category  and featured her story first CD release, “The Monti Presents: Hippo Award Winners, Volume 1”.  As a singer, Tara has performed throughout the country, and has performed as a featured vocalist at the famed Agape International Spiritual Center in Los Angeles, California. 

Ms. Lake is an alumna of the Kennedy Center Summer Playwriting Intensive, the Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop and the National Audio Theatre Festival’s Workshop 101. She is also a Puffin Foundation Arts Grantee, a Fractured Atlas Artist Grantee, and a Durham Arts Council Ella Fountain Pratt Emerging Artist Grantee.  

As a grantee, researcher, volunteer, and student of the world, she has traveled to countries including Switzerland, Vietnam, France, South Africa, Thailand, Costa Rica, Great Britain, Belize, Mexico, Cambodia, and Ghana.

A two-time McNair Scholar, she holds memberships in organizations including Phi Alpha Theta National History Honor Society, Golden Key International Honour Society, the Organization of American Historians, and the Association for the Study of African American Life and History. 

Tara Lake is a Magna Cum Laude graduate of Florida A&M University (B.A., English), and a graduate, with highest honors, of the M.A. in African American Studies program the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). There, she completed her thesis on the impact of Noble Sissle and Shuffle Along on the development of the Harlem Renaissance and African American performance culture. She also holds and M.A. in English and a Graduate Certification in History.  A born-and-bred Jersey girl, she lives in Philadelphia, PA.