On Love, Loss, and Ancestral Lands
Listen in to a conversation between Whiskey Tender author Deborah Jackson Taffa and Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi, novelist, non-fiction author, and Dorothy G. Griffin College Professor of English at the University of Notre Dame, that brings you to the vibrant landscapes of the American Southwest where memory, law, and spirit converge.
Experience the Event
Presented by Literatures of Annihilation, Exile, and Resistance
Enter the vibrant landscapes of the American Southwest, where memory, law, and spirit converge and witness a family’s resilience against systemic erasure. Navigate the profound spiritual connections between land and ancestry in this conversation between Whiskey Tender author Deborah Jackson Taffa and Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi, novelist, non-fiction author, and Dorothy G. Griffin College Professor of English at the University of Notre Dame, to reclaim a more honest American history. Traverse the emotional bridge connecting enduring wisdom and a deeper sense of belonging that challenges us to consider personal narratives as essential tools for social justice and cultural preservation.
This event is sponsored by Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, Creative Writing Program, Department of English, Liu Institute for Asia and Asian Studies, The Graduate School, Department of American Studies, Institute for Social Concerns, Teaching Beyond the Classroom Grants, The Brookline Booksmith Transnational Literature Series and the Franco Family Institute for Liberal Arts and the Public Good/Henkels Grant.
Literatures of Annihilation, Exile, and Resistance is a research collective, conversation series, and digital archive dedicated to contemporary literature shaped by exile, transnational migration, and human rights violations. The series brings Southwest and Southeast Asian and North African writers and artists into sustained dialogue with American writers and scholars to imagine new modes of literary production across borders and cultivate intersectional solidarities. The series was developed as a global public humanities project in partnership with institutes and initiatives both within and beyond the University of Notre Dame, and was founded by author and Dorothy G. Griffin College Professor of English at Notre Dame, Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi in 2020.
For more information visit the event website.
MoreMeet the Speaker: Deborah Jackson Taffa
Deborah Jackson Taffa is the director of the MFA CW Program at the Institute of American Indian Arts. Her memoir Whiskey Tender was a finalist for the 2024 National Book Award, as well as a longlisted title for a 2025 Carnegie Medal of Excellence in Nonfiction. It was named a Top Ten Book of 2024 by The Atlantic, Time Magazine, and Audible, as well as a top book on longer lists at NPR, Elle, Esquire, The NY Times, The New Yorker and Publisher’s Weekly. Taffa is a 2024 NEA Fellow, a 2022 winner of the PEN/Jean Stein Grant for Literary Oral History, and has received fellowships from Tin House, the University of Iowa, MacDowell, the Rona Jaffe Foundation, the Ellen Meloy Fund, and the New York State Summer Writers Institute. She is a citizen of the Kwatsaan (Yuma) Nation and Laguna Pueblo and earned her nonfiction MFA in Iowa City. Her writing can be found at The Boston Review, Poets and Writers, The Huff Post, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and many other outlets.
Meet the Faculty: Azareen Van Der Vliet Oloomi
Azareen Van Der Vliet Oloomi is an American novelist and non-fiction writer. She is the author of Call Me Zebra, named a Best Book of the Year by over twenty publications and the winner of the 2019 PEN/Faulkner Award, the John Gardner Award, and long listed for the PEN/Open Book Award. Her other novels include Savage Tongues and Fra Keeler, for which she received a Whiting Writers’ Award and a National Book Foundation “5 Under 35” award. She is the 2023-2024 Carl and Lily Pforzheimer Foundation Fiction Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies at Harvard University. A recipient of fellowships from Fulbright, the Aspen Institute, and MacDowell, her work has appeared in The Best American Short Stories, The Sewanee Review, The Yale Review, The New York Times, and The Paris Review among other places. In 2020, she founded Literatures of Annihilation, Exile & Resistance, a conversation series focused on the intersection of the arts and transformational migrations. Born in Los Angeles, she spent her childhood in Iran, the United Arab Emirates, and Spain, and speaks Farsi, Italian, and Spanish. She is the Dorothy G. Griffin College Professor of English at the University of Notre Dame.