Join us for a special 5:30 event with the Iowa Nonfiction Writing Program Alumni Series!  Deborah Taffa will read from her new book, Whiskey Tender. She will be joined in conversation by Melissa Febos.  “We have more Native stories now, but we have not heard one like this. Whiskey Tender is unexpected and propulsive, indeed tender, but also bold, and beautifully told, like a drink you didn’t know you were thirsty for. This book, never anything less than mesmerizing, is full of family stories and vital Native history. It pulses and it aches, and it lifts, consistently. It threads together so much truth by the time we are done, what has been woven together equals a kind of completeness from brokenness, and a hope from knowing love and loss and love again by naming it so.” — Tommy Orange

Deborah Jackson Taffa is a graduate of the Iowa Nonfiction Writing Program. She is a citizen of the Quechan (Yuma) Nation and Laguna Pueblo. She is the Director of the MFA in Creative Writing Program at the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Her writing has appeared in The Rumpus, Boston Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, A Public Space, Salon, the Huffington Post, Prairie Schooner, The Best Travel Writing, and other outlets.

Melissa Febos teaches at the Iowa Nonfiction Writing Program. She is the award-winning author of Girlhood, Abandon Me, Body Work, and Whip Smart.