About Me

Tara Grover Smith is a Northern Californian writer and coffee enthusiast. Her poems have appeared in various publications including Fairfield Review, Illya’s Honey, and Boston Literary Magazine. She earned an Honorable Mention for a rhyming poem in a Writer's Digest contest. Her films have been screened and have won prizes in competitions all over the United States, and her screenwriting has garnered awards in the New Hope Film Festival and other contests. She has been the recipient of two writing residencies from the Wellstone Center of the Redwoods.

I have worn many hats in my life, including being CEO of a Texas pet rescue and a fourth grade teacher.

In 2004, after having lived in Texas and Oklahoma for most of my life, I headed out west to Oregon. While I was in Oregon for that short time, I spent much of my time volunteering with various conservation organizations and exploring the urban wetlands, writing, sampling fabulous coffee, and caring for the animals I’d adopted.

I then moved to California, where my partner and I nestled into the arid foothills of the Sierra Nevadas with the happy chaos of his five children on weekends as well as the two dogs and four cats which soon expanded to include seven chickens.

I took on several jobs in the small town – I worked at a veterinary clinic, and then a print shop and a pizza shop next door to one another until I was offered a full-time job for $1 more an hour in the neighboring town in 2006. I worked for this print shop for several years, and the owners hosted our wedding reception in their home. Their kindness and the quirky staff continue to inspire me today. As they were retiring and selling the business, I moved on to teaching English and Composition through the Great Recession. In order to make ends meet, I had to take on teaching multiple online classes too. I calculated at one point I was grading 5,000 pages a year! This exhaustion and mind-numbness inspired a feature screenplay.

I became the publisher and Editor-in-Chief of one of 2012’s top ten best new magazines, according to Library Journal. After the publication folded, I found a steady job at a call center, which inspired me to write a one-act play. It was one of four winners of the Chico, California Blue Room Theater Fresh Ink contest. Seeing actors say my words was amazing! I was hooked! Soon after, I partnered with a friend, and we created a TV pilot that was optioned.

In 2016, I left the call center to work as a freelance writer and copy editor. This enabled me to spend quality time at home with my remaining pets who were growing old. If I hadn’t been working from home, it is possible I would not have been able to evacuate my 19-year old cat and two kittens in the November 2018 Paradise Camp Fire that destroyed our home and our town. That home was the longest my husband and I had lived in one place.

Post-fire, my husband and I have recovered and are doing fine in the neighboring town. Instead of rebuilding, I am devoted to living my life the 'write' way. I am committed to letting my voice be heard and my characters known. After the fire, I made a few short films including The Joymaker. Then, my production company became a SAG-AFTRA signatory, and I co-directed, produced, and acted in the pandemic-inspired short Two Kisses entirely via Zoom. 

My focus now is almost entirely on prose,  and I have ample experience to fuel my stories.

When I was in second grade in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on a freezing snowy day, the heater went out in the school. We were to be released early, but to keep us busy until then, our teacher gave us a vocabulary word bank we could use to create a story. 

We could write sentences with these vocabulary words in any way we wanted, and we didn't even have to use every word. I didn't know what the heck a 'Scrooge' was, or a 'Ghost of Christmas Past,' but I pulled off a mitten despite the cold and plunged into creating my very first story. It was pure, shivering heaven.