A native Southern Californian, alumna of USC’s historic School of Cinematic Arts production track, and graduate of San Diego State University’s MFA fiction writing program, Tara Stillions Whitehead (she/her) is a producer and writer concerned with elevating marginalized voices and combatting institutional and narrative violence in the film and television industry. On the film side of her creative coin, she has logged thousands of hours on set, worked as a producer, sound recordist, and DGA assistant director, and now serves as Assistant Professor of Film, Video, and Digital Media Production at Messiah University in Mechanicsburg, PA. Her industry credits span the independent market and festival circuits as well as network television shows, such as The Big Bang Theory and Two and a Half Men. She recently joined the Central Pennsylvania Film Commission’s nonprofit project FACTS (film, arts, culture, and tech symposium) as a Trade-Off program mentor, certifying students as production assistants for professional film and television.
A dedicated writer in multiple genres, Tara believes that storytelling is the greatest act of living and that the most powerful stories teach us how to be better humans. Her hybrid collections Blood Histories (Galileo Press), The Year of the Monster (Unsolicited Press), and They More Than Burned (forthcoming, Unsolicited Press) use formal experimentation to subvert and critique hegemonic “literary” conventions of narrative.
Tara’s books have been nominated for the Aspen Words Award, Maya Angelou Award, and Intro Journals Award, and have appeared on Small Press Distribution’s fiction bestsellers list. Her writing appeared in places like Fairy Tale Review, The Rupture, and American Literary Review and has been nominated for Best of the Net, Best Small Fictions, and the Pushcart Prize. Tara’s fiction was included in Wigleaf’s Top 50 in 2021 and 2022, and her essay, “The Mother Must Die and Other Lies Fairy Tales Told Me,” was selected as a notable essay in the Best American Essays 2022 anthology, edited by Alexander Chee.
Tara has received fellowship residencies from Sundress Academy of the Arts and Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and has served as a visiting writer at various colleges and universities, including Berry College, San Diego State University, Grossmont College, and SUNY Adirondack.
Tara Stillions Whitehead 