Tara Skurtu is a poet and writer, writing coach, speaker, and translator.

A two-time U.S. Fulbright grantee and recipient of two Academy of American Poets prizes, a Marcia Keach Poetry Prize, and a Robert Pinsky Global Fellowship, she holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Boston University and a Creative Writing Honors Certificate from the University of Massachusetts Boston. She is the author of the chapbook Skurtu, Romania, the full poetry collection The Amoeba Game, and the upcoming collection Faith Farm.

Tara has over ten years of experience leading creative seminars, and she specializes in coaching through the lens of writing and storytelling. She has presented at TEDx, CreativeMornings, and The Power of Storytelling, and at multinational corporations such as ING and Fidelity Investments. She was a member of the Edmond and Lily Safra Center for Ethics team at Harvard University, a lecturer in creative writing at Boston University, and she taught composition to incarcerated students through BU’s Prison Education Program. She was also a member of the core planning and teaching team for Robert Pinsky’s inaugural BU MOOC, “The Art of Poetry.”

Tara is the founder of the International Poetry Circle and a former steering committee member of Writers for Democratic Action. She is based in Brooklyn, where she is a writing coach for clients worldwide and is working on her collection of essays Don’t Ask Me Why I Live Here.