Join us for a reading with IAIA (The Institute of American Indian Arts) featuring IAIA alums Carla Crujido & Stacie Shannon Denetsosie and IAIA MFA Director in Creative Writing Deborah Taffa! Reading is open to the public and will take place at 7:30PM, also on Friday, November 10. For those interested, a workshop will be held with Carla Crujido and Deborah Taffa immediately prior to the reading.
IAIA's Mission: To empower creativity and leadership in Indigenous arts and cultures through higher education, lifelong learning, and community engagement.
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The Institute of American Indian Arts (formally known as the Institute of American Indian and Alaska Native Culture and Arts Development) is one of 37 tribal colleges in the United States. IAIA is accredited by the Higher Learning Commission (HLC) and is a member of the American Indian Higher Education Consortium (AIHEC).
Established as a high school in 1962 under the leadership of Lloyd Kiva New (Cherokee), Dr. George Boyce, and others, IAIA embodied a revolutionary approach to arts education. Now, sixty years later, we continue to fill a vital role as the only fine arts college in the world dedicated to the study of contemporary Native American and Alaskan Native arts.
Over the past six decades, IAIA’s influence on the art world has been monumental. “From the start of the Institute of American Indian Arts, students were encouraged to experiment,” says IAIA President Dr. Robert Martin (Cherokee Nation). “The boundaries were limitless. Our students were taught to develop their artistic style without being bound by tradition or history.” According to Dr. Martin, what makes IAIA a noteworthy institution is its student body, which enriches the campus community with its diversity, creativity, talents, and passion. “What I’ve admired most during my tenure here is observing the evolution of our students’ creativity and the ways in which they learn to take risks and manifest other leadership qualities while advancing their artistic expression.”
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Carla Crujido is the Nonfiction Editor at River Styx Magazine. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the Institute of American Indian Arts and has had writing published in Crazyhorse, Yellow Medicine Review, Ricepaper Magazine, Tinfish Press, The Ana, and elsewhere. She lives in the Pacific Northwest.
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Stacie Denetsosie is a citizen of the Navajo Nation her clans are Todích'íí'nii (Bitterwater Clan), born for Naakaii (Mexican Clan). She is from Kayenta, Arizona but currently resides in Northern Utah. She is a recipient of the UCROSS Native American Fellowship. Stacie graduated with her MFA in Fiction from the Institute of American Indian Arts in 2021. Her work has appeared in Yellow Medicine Review, Phoebe Magazine, and Cut Bank. Her debut story collection, The Missing Morningstar and Other Stories, received a Kirkus Star.
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Deborah Jackson Taffa is the Director of the MFA in Creative Writing at IAIA (Institute of American Indian Arts) in Santa Fe, NM. Her memoir, WHISKEY TENDER, was named one of the most anticipated books to watch for in 2024 by Zibby Media. She has won fellowships and grants from PEN America, MacDowell, Hedgebrook, Rona Jaffe, Tin House, A Public Space, the Ellen Meloy Fund, the Kranzberg Arts Foundaion, and the NY State Summer Writer’s Institute.
A citizen of the Quechan (Yuma) Nation and Laguna Pueblo, Deborah earned her MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Iowa in Iowa City. Prior to her job at IAIA, she taught Creative Nonfiction at Webster University and Washington University in Saint Louis. She also served as an Executive Board Member with the Missouri Humanities Council where she was instrumental in creating a Native American Heritage Program in the state.
She serves as the editor-in-chief of the literary magazine, River Styx. Her writing can be found at The Rumpus, Boston Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, A Public Space, Salon, Huff Post, Prairie Schooner, The Best Travel Writing, The Best of Brevity: Twenty Groundbreaking Years of Flash Nonfiction, and The Best American Nonrequired Reading, as well as other places. Her play, “Parents Weekend,” was performed at the Autry Theater’s 8th Annual Short Play Festival in Los Angeles in 2018, and “Digadohi,” a documentary she co-wrote with Stratigraphic Productions, can be found streaming on local PBS channels.
As a performer, Deborah has had the incredible honor of reading a series of poetic interludes for the Chaco Symphony featuring the Grammy nominated flautist, R. Carlos Nakai. She will be performing again with the symphony in Durango, Colorado, on March 15, 2024. She can be reached at deborah.taffa@iaia.edu or followed on Twitter @deborahtaffa.