“Written in the Waters” with Tara Roberts

MCC Celebrates Juneteenth!

Perspective Speakers Series

Presented in Partnership with the Fairfax County Public Library
“Written in the Waters”
An Evening with National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Tara Roberts
Tuesday, June 17, 7 p.m.
Free admission. Registration is required. Register on the FCPL website, here

For Adults and Teens

National Geographic explorer and storyteller Tara Roberts follows a team on a quest to document and identify sunken slave shipwrecks. Part adventure story, part scientific log and part personal memoir, “Written in the Waters” catalogues Tara’s journey with divers, historians and archeologists who are searching the Middle Passage for the wrecks of ships that carried enslaved Africans.

Tara Roberts is a National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence. She has spent the last few years 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 a National Geographic-produced podcast called “Into the Depths” and was featured in the March issue of National Geographic. Tara became the first Black female explorer ever to be featured on the cover of the magazine. And in 2022, she was named the Rolex National Geographic Explorer of the Year. Tara was also named a Fellow at the MIT Open Documentary Lab in 2019. She spent her early career years working as an editor for women and teen magazines like Essence and CosmoGirl.

“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.” — Elizabeth Gilbert, New York Times bestselling author of “Eat, Pray, Love”