Tara Stillions Whitehead is a writer and filmmaker from Southern California. She received her BA in Cinema-Television Production from University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts and earned her MFA in Creative Writing at San Diegeo State University.

Tara has worked as a DGA assistant director, producer, sound mixer, and screenwriter in commercial television and independent film. Her television credits include The Big Bang Theory and Two and a Half Men, and her prose has appeared in several dozen journals and magazines, including Hobart, trampset, Fairy Tale Review, Cream City Review, and The Rupture. Her story, "Seven Bodied I Didn't Leave Behind" was included in Wigleaf's Top 50 in 2021 and her story, "Flashover," was included in Wigleaf's Top 50 in 2022. Her hybrid chapbook, Blood Histories, was released by South Carolina's Galileo Press/Free State Review in 2021, and her debut full-length collection, The Year of the Monster, which has been nominated for the Maya Angelou Book Award, is forthcoming with Unsolicited Press 9.27.22. A second collection of stories titled They More than Burned will be released by ELJ Editions in August 2023.