Tara’s fiction has appeared in TriQuarterly, Quarterly West, Center: A Journal of the Literary Arts, Harpur Palate, The Gettysburg Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Confrontation, The William and Mary Review, pacific REVIEW, The Evansville Review, and Southern Women's Review. She was the recipient of a full writing fellowship at the Vermont Studio Center.

Her story “These Woods” was a finalist for the 2006 John Gardner Fiction Prize, and “Negotiations” was a semifinalist for the 2007 Mid-American Review Sherwood Anderson Fiction Award. In 2009, “Confessions” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize and received an honorable mention.

Tara’s scripts have placed in several major competitions. Her feature-length script “The Awakening,” an adaptation of Kate Chopin’s novel The Awakening (1899), was a semifinalist in the Write Movies screenwriting contest, a 2nd Rounder in the Austin Film Festival, and a quarter finalist in the AAA contest, sponsored by Creative Screenwriting magazine. “Positive Energy,” a drama for an ensemble cast, was also a semifinalist in the Write Movies contest and was a quarter finalist in the Scriptapalooza contest. Tara has also written or co-written several short-film scripts.

In 2014, Elemental, her novel in stories, was published by Livingston Press. Tara received her MFA in fiction writing from the Stonecoast MFA program at the University of Southern Maine. She’s currently writing her second novel and a collection of reflective vignettes.