Deborah Jackson Taffa is a citizen of the Quechan (Yuma) Nation and Laguna Pueblo. She earned her MFA at the Nonfiction Writing Program (NWP) in Iowa City and 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, the Boston Review, the Los Angeles Review of Books, A Public Space, Salon, the Huffington Post, Prairie Schooner, The Best American Nonrequired Reading, and other outlets.