“Whiskey Tender”, a memoir from HarperCollins, forthcoming in 2023.
A citizen of the Yuma Kwaa-Tsaan Nation, and descendent of Laguna Pueblo, Deborah Taffa’s stories have appeared in The Rumpus, The Boston Review, LARB, Salon, Huff Post, Best of Brevity: Twenty Groundbreaking Years of Flash Nonfiction, and The Best American Nonrequired Reading.
She earned her Creative Nonfiction MFA in Iowa City in 2013 and has been awarded fellowships from the New York State Summer Writers Institute, Rona Jaffee, Hedgebrook, MacDowell, The Ellen Meloy Fund, A Public Space, Tin House and PEN America.
Her essay collection as memoir, WHISKEY TENDER, is forthcoming from HarperCollins Harper in 2023. The book interrogates historic injustices through a personal lens and was awarded the Santa Fe Writer’s Literary Award in December 2019.
Deborah is the director of the MFA in Creative Writing at IAIA. Her stories reflect both her roots and her wings.
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