Deborah Taffa

Deborah Taffa is the director of the MFACW Program at the IAIA in Santa Fe, NM. Her memoir Whiskey Tender was a 2024 National Book Award finalist. It was named a Top Ten Book of 2024 by The Atlantic, Time, Audible, Esquire, Elle, Publisher’s Weekly and other outlets. Taffa is a 2024 NEA Fellow, a 2022 winner of the PEN/Jean Stein Grant, and has received fellowships from Tin House, MacDowell, and the NY State Summer Writers Institute. A graduate of Iowa City’s MFA in Nonfiction Program, she is member of Laguna Pueblo and the Kwatsaan Yuma Indian Nations. She lives in Santa Fe, NM, with her husband, Simone, who hails from Milan, Italy. Her writing reflects both her roots and her wings.