Celebrate literary excellence and community spirit!
The gala promises an enchanting experience with special guest, Deborah Taffa, a captivating guitar performance by Nacha Mendez, and the announcement of winners of our Southwest Book Design and Production Awards.
Details
When: Thursday, August 21, 2025 | 5.30 PM - 8.30 PM
Where: Santa Fe Las Campanas, Club Room
What to expect:
Drinks: Credit Card Bar
Dress code: Santa Fe Dressy Casual
Parking: There is plenty of available parking at Las Campanas.
Where: Santa Fe Las Campanas, Club Room
What to expect:
- Special guest Deborah Taffa, 2024 National Book Award Finalist
- Guitar performance by Nacha Mendez, New Mexico Platinum Music Lifetime Achievement Award recipient
- Winners of our Southwest Book Design and Production Awards (SWBDA)
- Collected Works Bookstore will be on hand to sell books by Deborah Taffa.
Drinks: Credit Card Bar
Dress code: Santa Fe Dressy Casual
Parking: There is plenty of available parking at Las Campanas.
Images from the 2023 Gala
Special Guest Deborah TaffaDeborah Taffa’s Whiskey Tender was a finalist for the 2024 National Book Award. Named a top ten book of the year by The Atlantic, Time Magazine, NPR, Elle, Esquire, Audible, and other outlets, it was also longlisted for a 2025 Carnegie Medal of Excellence in Nonfiction. Taffa is a 2024 NEA Fellow, a 2022 PEN/Jean Stein grant winner, and has received fellowships from Tin House, the University of Iowa, MacDowell, the Ellen Meloy Fund, and other organizations. She is director of the MFACW program at the IAIA in Santa Fe, NM.
Learn more about Deborah Taffa at www.deborahtaffa.com |
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About Whiskey Tender
Finalist for the National Book Award
Longlisted for a Carnegie Medal for Excellence
Winner of the Southwest Book Award
A Best Book of the Year: Washington Post, Esquire, Time, The Atlantic, NPR, and Publishers Weekly
An Oprah Daily "Best New Book" and "Riveting Nonfiction and Memoir You Need to Read" * A New York Times "New Book to Read" * A Zibby Mag "Most Anticipated Book" * A San Francisco Chronicle "New Book to Cozy Up With" * The Millions "Most Anticipated" *An Amazon Editors "Best Book of the Month" * A Parade "Best New Work By Indigenous Writers" * An NPR "Book We Love"
“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, National Bestselling Author of There There
Reminiscent of the works of Mary Karr and Terese Marie Mailhot, a memoir of family and survival, coming-of-age on and off the reservation, and of the frictions between mainstream American culture and Native inheritance; assimilation and reverence for tradition.
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. Assimilation meant relocation, but as Taffa matured into adulthood, she began to question the promise handed down by her elders and by American society: that if she gave up her culture, her land, and her traditions, she would not only be accepted, but would be able to achieve the “American Dream.”
Whiskey Tender traces how a mixed tribe native girl—born on the California Yuma reservation and raised in Navajo territory in New Mexico—comes to her own interpretation of identity, despite her parent’s desires for her to transcend the class and “Indian” status of her birth through education, and despite the Quechan tribe’s particular traditions and beliefs regarding oral and recorded histories. Taffa’s childhood memories unspool into meditations on tribal identity, the rampant criminalization of Native men, governmental assimilation policies, the Red Power movement, and the negotiation between belonging and resisting systemic oppression. Pan-Indian, as well as specific tribal histories and myths, blend with stories of a 1970s and 1980s childhood spent on and off the reservation.
Taffa offers a sharp and thought-provoking historical analysis laced with humor and heart. As she reflects on her past and present—the promise of assimilation and the many betrayals her family has suffered, both personal and historical; trauma passed down through generations—she reminds us of how the cultural narratives of her ancestors have been excluded from the central mythologies and structures of the “melting pot” of America, revealing all that is sacrificed for the promise of acceptance.
Longlisted for a Carnegie Medal for Excellence
Winner of the Southwest Book Award
A Best Book of the Year: Washington Post, Esquire, Time, The Atlantic, NPR, and Publishers Weekly
An Oprah Daily "Best New Book" and "Riveting Nonfiction and Memoir You Need to Read" * A New York Times "New Book to Read" * A Zibby Mag "Most Anticipated Book" * A San Francisco Chronicle "New Book to Cozy Up With" * The Millions "Most Anticipated" *An Amazon Editors "Best Book of the Month" * A Parade "Best New Work By Indigenous Writers" * An NPR "Book We Love"
“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, National Bestselling Author of There There
Reminiscent of the works of Mary Karr and Terese Marie Mailhot, a memoir of family and survival, coming-of-age on and off the reservation, and of the frictions between mainstream American culture and Native inheritance; assimilation and reverence for tradition.
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. Assimilation meant relocation, but as Taffa matured into adulthood, she began to question the promise handed down by her elders and by American society: that if she gave up her culture, her land, and her traditions, she would not only be accepted, but would be able to achieve the “American Dream.”
Whiskey Tender traces how a mixed tribe native girl—born on the California Yuma reservation and raised in Navajo territory in New Mexico—comes to her own interpretation of identity, despite her parent’s desires for her to transcend the class and “Indian” status of her birth through education, and despite the Quechan tribe’s particular traditions and beliefs regarding oral and recorded histories. Taffa’s childhood memories unspool into meditations on tribal identity, the rampant criminalization of Native men, governmental assimilation policies, the Red Power movement, and the negotiation between belonging and resisting systemic oppression. Pan-Indian, as well as specific tribal histories and myths, blend with stories of a 1970s and 1980s childhood spent on and off the reservation.
Taffa offers a sharp and thought-provoking historical analysis laced with humor and heart. As she reflects on her past and present—the promise of assimilation and the many betrayals her family has suffered, both personal and historical; trauma passed down through generations—she reminds us of how the cultural narratives of her ancestors have been excluded from the central mythologies and structures of the “melting pot” of America, revealing all that is sacrificed for the promise of acceptance.
Musical Performance by Nacha Mendez
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Nacha Mendez grew up in a southern New Mexico border town. Learning traditional Ranchera cancion from her grandmother, Mendez toured and performed in small towns near El Paso with her cousins, the sons of Mother Invention drummer Jimmy Carl Black. Before moving to New York City, Mendez studied classical voice and electronic music at New Mexico State University. Mendez studied flamenco guitar with Manuel Granados of the Music Conservatory of Barcelona before joining Robert Ashley's opera company as a principal singer. Voted Best Female vocalist in Santa Fe in 2009 and 2010, Mendez received the New Mexico Lifetime Achievement Award in 2018. |
Tickets
Tickets are $75 per person.
This event has sold out in the past; please be sure to purchase your tickets soon if you'd like to attend.
We know plans can change and thus we urge you to let us know of any changes to your attendance status, as soon as possible. We will be happy to refund your payment and make room for others on the waitlist to attend.
For questions, email [email protected].
This event has sold out in the past; please be sure to purchase your tickets soon if you'd like to attend.
We know plans can change and thus we urge you to let us know of any changes to your attendance status, as soon as possible. We will be happy to refund your payment and make room for others on the waitlist to attend.
For questions, email [email protected].
The Club at Las Campanas
Directions to Las Campanas Clubhouse
132 Clubhouse Drive
Santa Fe, New Mexico 87506
Travel North on US 84/285 toward Opera. Exit onto 599 West (Relief Route) and go about 3 miles to Camino La Tierra exit on your right.
At stop sign turn right and go 2.2 miles to fork; veer right onto Las Campanas Drive and go .2 miles to another fork.
Stay left on Las Campanas Drive for another 1 ½ miles to Clubhouse main gate on right.
Stop at gate and tell guard where you are going, then go about 1 ½ miles on Clubhouse Drive to Clubhouse, passing tennis courts and Fitness Center on your right.
WARNING: IT'S IMPORTANT FOR PEOPLE TO GO TO THE MAIN GATE, WHICH IS ON CLUBHOUSE DRIVE BECAUSE IT'S STAFFED 24/7. SOMETIMES GPS TAKES DRIVERS TO A GATE OFF CAMINO LA TIERRA, WHICH IS NOT STAFFED TO LET PEOPLE IN.
132 Clubhouse Drive
Santa Fe, New Mexico 87506
Travel North on US 84/285 toward Opera. Exit onto 599 West (Relief Route) and go about 3 miles to Camino La Tierra exit on your right.
At stop sign turn right and go 2.2 miles to fork; veer right onto Las Campanas Drive and go .2 miles to another fork.
Stay left on Las Campanas Drive for another 1 ½ miles to Clubhouse main gate on right.
Stop at gate and tell guard where you are going, then go about 1 ½ miles on Clubhouse Drive to Clubhouse, passing tennis courts and Fitness Center on your right.
WARNING: IT'S IMPORTANT FOR PEOPLE TO GO TO THE MAIN GATE, WHICH IS ON CLUBHOUSE DRIVE BECAUSE IT'S STAFFED 24/7. SOMETIMES GPS TAKES DRIVERS TO A GATE OFF CAMINO LA TIERRA, WHICH IS NOT STAFFED TO LET PEOPLE IN.
