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Deborah Jackson Taffa was raised to believe that some sacrifices were necessary to achieve a better life. Her grandparents—citizens of the Quechan Nation and Laguna Pueblo tribe—were sent to Indian boarding schools run by white missionaries, while her parents were encouraged to take part in governmental job training off the reservation. More about this book >
Deborah Jackson Taffa is the Director of the MFA in Creative Writing at the Institute of American Indian Arts. Her memoir Whiskey Tender was a Finalist for the 2024 National Book Award, as well as a longlisted title for a 2025 Carnegie Medal of Excellence in Nonfiction. It was named a Top Ten Book of 2024 by The Atlantic, TIME Magazine, and Audible, as well as a top book on longer lists at NPR, ELLE, Esquire, the New York Times, The New Yorker, and Publisher’s Weekly. Taffa is a 2024 National Endowment for the Arts Fellow in Prose, a 2022 PEN/Jean Stein Grant for Literary Oral History recipient, and has received fellowships from Tin House, the University of Iowa, MacDowell, the Rona Jaffe Foundation, the Ellen Meloy Fund, and the New York State Summer Writers Institute. She is a citizen of the Kwatsaan (Yuma) Nation and Laguna Pueblo and earned her nonfiction MFA in Iowa City.
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