Tara Roberts Author Talk and Book Signing

This is a ticketed event, and each ticket includes general admission plus a copy of "Written in the Waters" which will be signed by Tara after the event.

This searing memoir by a National Geographic explorer recounts one woman's epic journey to trace the global slave trade across the Atlantic Ocean—and find her place in the world.
For fans of adventurous women’s memoirs like Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat Pray Love, Cheryl Strayed's Wild, and Jesmyn Ward's Men We Reaped.
When Tara Roberts first caught sight of a photograph at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History depicting the underwater archaeology group Diving With a Purpose, it called out to her. Here were Black women and men strapping on masks, fins, and tanks to explore Atlantic Ocean waters along the coastlines of Africa, North America, and Central America, seeking the wrecks of slave ships long lost in time. Inspired, Roberts joined them—and started on a path of discovery more challenging and personal than she could ever have imagined.
In this lush and lyrical memoir, she tells a story of exploration and reckoning that takes her from her home in Washington, D.C., to an exotic array of locales: Thailand and Sri Lanka, Mozambique, South Africa, Senegal, Benin, Costa Rica, and St. Croix. The journey connects her with other divers, scholars, and archaeologists, offering a unique way of understanding the 12.5 million souls carried away from their African homeland to enslavement on other continents. But for Roberts, the journey is also intensely personal. Inspired by the descendants of those who lost their lives during the Middle Passage, she decides to plumb her own family history and life as a Black woman to help make sense of her own identity.
Complex and unflinchingly authentic, this deeply moving narrative heralds an important new voice in literature that will open minds and hearts everywhere.

Tara Roberts is a writer and storyteller whose work shines a light on the origin story of Africans in the Americas—bringing empathy, nuance and complexity to their journey. She was a fellow at MIT’s Open Documentary Lab and, throughout her career, has worked as an editor for CosmoGirl, Essence, AOL, EBONY and Heart & Soul. Tara is the first Black female National Geographic Explorer to appear on the cover of National Geographic magazine, where her story has reached over 26 million people.Working alongside Diving With a Purpose—a team of Black scuba divers—Tara spent several years searching for shipwrecks that once carried captive Africans during the transatlantic slave trade. Along the way, she documented the stories of the divers, historians, archaeologists and communities she encountered, culminating in the National Geographic Society-funded podcast Into the Depths. This critically-acclaimed series received close to half a million downloads and was included on ‘Best of’ lists for Essence magazine and Spotify. Most recently, she was named the 2022 Rolex National Geographic Explorer of the Year, becoming the first Black American to receive the honor.

Host or Publisher Baldwin & Co.