Tara Bray Smith was born and grew up in Hawai'i, USA. She is a graduate of Dartmouth College and Columbia University, and now lives in New York state.
She was the author of an article about Hawai'i that appeared in Granta 77: "What We Think of America." Recently, Simon & Schuster published her memoir, West of Then: A Mother, a Daughter, and a Journey Past Paradise about her mother and her mother's family in Hawaii, rooted in the diminished wealth of 19th century sugar plantations. She's also the author of a teen novel, Betwixt.