Tanaya Winder


Tanaya Winder is a performance poet, writer, motivational speaker and educator. She was raised on the in Ignacio, Colorado and is an enrolled member of the . Her background includes Southern Ute, Pyramid Lake Paiute, Dine, and Black heritages. With fellow Indigenous writer Casandra Lopez, she founded , an online literary magazine to "showcase the creative literary expressions and scholarly work of both emerging and established women writers from around the world." With Lakota rap artist Frank Waln and other collaborators, she runs , an organization to promote Indigenous artists and support young Native students. In 2015, Winder published her first book of poetry, Words Like Love.
Winder grew up on the Southern Ute Indian Reservation in Ignacio, Colorado, and is of Southern Ute, Duckwater Shoshone, and Pyramid Lake Paiute heritage. As a teacher, Winder has worked at Stanford and the University of Colorado Boulder's Upward Bound program. In 2010, she won the Orlando Poetry Prize for her poem "The Impermanence of Human Sculptures." In 2013 she appeared on TEDxABQ with a talk called "Igniting Healing." In 2015, Winder co-curated "Sing Our River Red," a traveling exhibit of single earrings to raise awareness of Canada's epidemic of missing and murdered indigenous women. The following year, she was named one of the "Native American 40 under 40" by the National Center for American Indian Enterprise Development.

Education

Tanaya's interest in poetry began in her senior year of high school with the passing of her grandfather. His passing and her loss led her to poetry. Tanaya attended Stanford University and although she set out to become a lawyer, Tanaya switched to English in her sophomore year, graduating in 2008 with a BA in English with an emphasis on Creative Writing. Tanaya attended graduate school at the University of New Mexico and received an MFA in Creative Writing/Poetry. Her dissertation was titled, "A collection of poems utilizing motifs of music, birds, and winter to explore themes of loss along with historical and contemporary trauma within Indigenous communities".

Published books

2013 “The Order of Things" performed at Emotive Fruition in NYC at the Bowery Poetry.
2013 “Castaway, Castaway,” performed in Love, Redefined by the Poetic Theater Productions Company in NYC.
2013 “Love in a Time of Blood Quantum” performed by the Poetic Theater Productions Company in NYC.
2012 “Somewhere Being Written,” “Love in a Time of Blood Quantum,” “W:Self-Medication,” and “Ten Little Indians.” performed by Poetic Theater Productions Company in NYC.

Choral Settings of Original Poems:

2012 "Somewhere the Song," published by June Sky Press, performed by Princeton Singers and the University of Missouri River Campus choir.

Poetry

  1. 2009 University of New Mexico's Best English 102 Sequence for New Instructors
  2. 2009 Nominated for the First Peoples Fund’s Community Spirit Award
  3. 2010: Orlando Prize in poetry from the
  4. 2012 Semi-Finalist for the Kenyon Review / Earthworks Prize for Indigenous Poetry
  5. The National Center for American Indian Enterprise Development named her one of “40 Under 40” emerging American Indian leaders
  6. 2014 Nominated for Best New Poets 2014 Anthology
  7. , Artists in Business Leadership fellow

    Scholarships

  8. 2011 Hillerman/McGarrity Scholarship in Creative Writing
  9. 2009 Lynn Reyer Award in Tribal Community Development
  10. 2007-2009 Andrew Mellon Mays Fellow
  11. 2004-2008 Gates Millennium Scholar