The Writing Generation Series: Reading with Deborah Jackson Taffa

About this event

Santa Fe Community College’s Library and Creative Writing program present the free online Fall 2026 Writing Generation (Wri-Gen) Series beginning Sept. 23 led by esteemed writers. Each writer will present a reading, followed the next week by a creative (generative writing) session. Participants may register for the readings only or for both the readings and the generative writing sessions. The creative sessions will offer an opportunity to explore ideas together through guided activities led by the presenting writers. No writing experience is necessary.

Register just once for the entire semester at https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/WriGenFall2026. The sessions begin at 6 p.m. on Wednesdays and will feature writers Jeremy Mata Kinter (Sept. 23 reading; Sept. 30 creative session), Rebecca Reuter Puerto (Oct. 21 reading; Oct. 28 creative session), and Deborah Jackson Taffa (Nov. 11 reading; Nov. 18 creative session).

Participants will have an opportunity to share their work during the final Zoom session on Dec. 2. Registrants will receive a Zoom link via email the morning of each event.

Deborah Jackson Taffa

6 p.m. Nov. 11 reading

6 p.m. Nov. 18 creative session

Bio: Award-winning memoirist, Deborah Jackson Taffa, is the author of Whiskey Tender, a finalist for the 2024 National Book Award. Named a top book of 2024 by The Atlantic, Time Magazine, NPR, Elle, Esquire, Oprah Daily, Audible, and Publisher’s Weekly, the memoir won both a Southwest Book Prize and an International Latino Book Award. Taffa is a 2024 NEA Fellow, a 2022 winner of the PEN Jean Stein Grant. She is a citizen of the Kwatsaan Nation and Laguna Pueblo and director of the MFA CW at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, NM. She recently won the Howard Foundation Award from Brown University for her novel-in-progress, All the Bones Have Fallen.

About her writing: The author’s memoir, Whiskey Tender, is a series of personal essays. Each chapter works as a standalone piece (no chapter ending cliffhangers allowed) while simultaneously contributing to a complete narrative arc, or traditional novel-type form. She interweaves history in her memoir, illustrating the way a good memoir tells, not only what happened, but how society pressured and shaped the memoirist’s moral education. She is an accomplished writer who employs a narrative style in her telling in order to entertain readers while also educating them about hidden histories. Her work also illustrates the necessity of pacing, persona, lyric language, and dialogue to engage readers.

About the creative session: Taffa will give a craft lecture/workshop on the addition and subtraction required to shape memories on the page. Participants will be asked to consider where they find their emotional content, how they build characters, and why they must write close to the body through a series of flash prompts.