Award-winning author Deborah Jackson Taffa is the author of the bestselling memoir, "Whiskey Tender," a 2024 National Book Award Finalist that was a longlisted title for a 2025 Carnegie Medal. Named a top book of 2024 by The Atlantic, Time Magazine, NPR, Elle, Esquire, The NY Times, The New Yorker, Audible, The Washington Post, Oprah Daily, and Publisher's Weekly, Whiskey Tender won, both, a Southwest Book Prize and an International Latino Book Award, and was an Amazon Editor’s Best Choice Book for the year as well. A citizen of the Quechan (Yuma) Nation and Laguna Pueblo, Taffa earned her MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Iowa in Iowa City. She later taught Creative Nonfiction at Webster University and Washington University in Saint Louis. She also served as an Executive Board Member with the Missouri Humanities Council where she was instrumental in creating a Native American Heritage Program in the state. Her first manuscript, a memoir about growing up on the Yuma and Navajo reservations, was awarded the Santa Fe Writer's Literary Award by Carmen Maria Machado in 2019. She co-wrote "Digadohi: Lands, Cherokee, and the Trail of Tears," a documentary that debuted on PBS in August, 2020. Currently working on her second story collection, Deborah Jackson Taffa today lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico and serves as the director of the MFA CW Program at the Institute of American Indian Arts. Come to this author's reading, Q & A, and book selling/signing event!
