Author TARU writes vernacular literature ? literary fiction in street lit's clothes, raw and unflinching, rooted in the places that raise you or break you. Author TARU won the 2026 BCALA Self-Publishing eBook Fiction Award for Silas Page, the Black Caucus of the American Library Association's annual recognition of the year's most distinguished work of self-published Black fiction. A Hill District native out of Pittsburgh and a military veteran by way of Virginia's 757, Author TARU brings lived experience to a growing catalog of urban fiction that refuses to look away.