Tara Moss

About Tara

Tara Moss is a bestselling author, documentary host, public speaker and human rights advocate.  Tara is also an advocate for people with disabilities and chronic pain.

Since 1999 she has written 13 bestselling books, published in 19 countries and 13 languages, including the acclaimed Mak Vanderwall crime fiction series and the Pandora English paranormal series. Her 12th book is the historical crime novel Dead Man Switch, published in Australia/New Zealand with HarperCollins Publishers. Her 13th book is the historical crime novel The War Widow – Which is an international best seller  published with Harper Collins Publishers across Australia/NZ/USA and Canada.

Her first non-fiction book, the critically acclaimed The Fictional Woman, was published in 2014 and became a number one national non-fiction bestseller, and her iconic cover design, featuring her face labeled with ‘fictions’ or stereotypes about women won Best Non-Fiction Book Design.

Moss is also the host, co-executive producer and co-writer of Cyberhate with Tara Moss on Australia’s ABC, examining the phenomenon of online abuse, and she gave her address to the nation, ‘Cyberhate and Beyond’, at the National Press Club in 2017, putting the phenomenon of extreme online abuse and harassment on the national agenda. She is an outspoken advocate for human rights and the rights of women and children, has been a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador since 2007 and since 2013 has been UNICEF Australia’s National Ambassador for Child Survival, and has visited Australian hospitals, maternity wards, refuges and schools as well as Syrian refugee camps in her UNICEF role. In 2014 she was recognised for Outstanding Advocacy for her blog Manus Island: An insider’s report, which helped to break information to the public about the events surrounding the alleged murder of Reza Barati inside the Australian-run Manus Island Immigration Detention Centre.

In 2015 Moss received an Edna Ryan Award for her significant contribution to feminist debate, speaking out for women and children and inspiring others to challenge the status quo, and in 2017 she was recognised as one of the Global Top 50 Diversity Figures in Public Life, for using her position in public life to make a positive impact in diversity, alongside Malala Yousufzai, Angelina Jolie, His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama of Tibet and more.

An experienced host and interviewer with an endless interest in human stories, Moss has hosted the true crime documentary series Tough Nuts – Australia’s Hardest Criminals on the Crime & Investigation Network and Amazon Prime, Tara Moss Investigates on the National Geographic Channel and the author interview show Tara in Conversation on 13th Street Universal. In 2018 Moss also hosted The Craft Of Writing series on RN (Radio National) Australia. She has interviewed luminaries from Gloria Steinem and Naomi Klein to Amanda Palmer and authors Val McDermid, Lynda La Plante, Michael Connelly and more. As a public speaker she has spoken at hundreds of universities, schools, writers’ festivals, town halls, community and corporate events, the Sydney Opera House, Australian Parliament and more.

Her in-depth novel research has seen her tour the FBI Academy at Quantico, spend time in squad cars, morgues, prisons, the Hare Psychopathy Lab, the Supreme Court and criminology conferences, take polygraph tests, shoot weapons, conduct surveillance, pass the Firearms Training Simulator (FATSII) with the LAPD, pull 4.2 G’s doing loops over the Sydney Opera House flying with the RAAF, and acquire her CAMS race driver licence. She is a PhD Candidate at the University of Sydney and has earned her private investigator credentials (Cert III) from the Australian Security Academy.

She is a mother, a wife and a dual Canadian/Australian citizen, and currently resides with her family in Vancouver, BC. She is a new signing with CookeMcDermid Literary Management in Toronto and New York, and a new ‘Cult Woman’ with Grey Model Agency, London.