THE ROBBINS HOUSE PRESENTS
Tara Roberts
Tara Roberts spent the last six years following, diving with, and telling stories about Black scuba divers as they searched for and helped document slave shipwrecks around the world. Her journey was turned into an award-winning National Geographic-produced podcast called “Into the Depths” and featured in the March issue of National Geographic Magazine. Tara became the first Black female explorer ever to be featured on the cover of Nat Geo. In 2022, Tara was named the Rolex National Geographic Explorer of the Year. Currently, she is an Explorer-in-Residence at the National Geographic Society. And her book Written in the Waters: A Memoir of History, Home and Belonging hits stands in January 2025.
Tara also worked as an editor for magazines like CosmoGirl, Essence, EBONY and Heart & Soul and edited several books for girls. She was a Fellow at the MIT Open Documentary Lab. She founded her own magazine for women who are ‘too bold for boundaries..' And Tara spent an amazing year backpacking around the world to find and tell stories about young women change agents. The journey led to the creation of a nonprofit that supported and funded their big ideas.
Tara Roberts
author of
Written in the Waters
A Memoir of History, Home and Belonging
Thursday, October 23
6:00 PM
Concord Free Public Library
129 Main Street, Concord
When Tara Roberts first caught sight of a photograph at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History depicting the scuba and 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.
“Roberts matches a reporter’s meticulousness with a memoirist’s emotional attunement, delivering a sweeping survey of slavery’s repercussions. It’s a must-read.”
“Tara Roberts is a pioneer and an inspiration. Her work does not so much ‘unearth’ the past as pull it respectfully out of the depths of the sea and the shadows of history. I am deeply moved by this book, and by her journey.”
“Tara Roberts is a force of nature and a beautiful storyteller. Written in the Waters is deeply personal and moving: a tale of identity and conviction.”
The Robbins House is a Concord-based nonprofit organization focused on raising awareness of Concord’s African, African American, and antislavery history from the 17th through the 19th centuries. Our mission is to reveal the little known African American history of Concord and its regional and national importance. Our vision is to inspire conversation, expand understanding and contribute to a better society. Learn more at robbinshouse.org
