As writers, we shape stories — but the stories we tell ourselves often shape us in return. This cross-genre lecture invites participants to examine the narrative structures that influence both our creative work and lived experience. We’ll consider how personal and cultural narratives inform voice, form, and content — and how revising these inherited frameworks can open new imaginative possibilities. Through writing exercises and the discussion of examples from literary works, participants will deepen their sense of narrative agency and explore how language can unsettle, reframe, and remake. This is a space for writers to interrogate the stories that confine and discover those that compel.

Deborah Taffa’s Whiskey Tender was a finalist for the 2024 National Book Award. Named a top 10 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 and a 2022 PEN/Jean Stein grant winner, and she 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, New Mexico.