Deborah Taffa is the director of the creative writing MFA program at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe. Winner of the PEN/Jean Stein Grant for Literary History, she earned her MFA in creative nonfiction from the University of Iowa and has received fellowships from MacDowell, the Rona Jaffe Foundation, Tin House, the Ellen Meloy Fund, A Public Space, and the New York State Summer Writers Institute. Her memoir Whiskey Tender is forthcoming from HarperCollins next year. Taffa is a citizen of the Quechan (Yuma) Nation and Laguna Pueblo.