Tanaya Winder is an author, singer / songwriter, poet, motivational speaker and educator who comes from an intertribal lineage of Southern Ute, Pyramid Lake Paiute, Diné and Duckwater Shoshone Nations where she is an enrolled citizen. Tanaya’s performances and talks emphasize the importance of “heartwork” – the life path one is meant to follow by using their gifts and passions. She blends storytelling, singing, and spoken word to teach about different expressions of love (self love, intimate love, social love, community love, and universal love).
A winner of the 2010 A Room Of Her Own Foundation’s Orlando prize in poetry, her work has appeared or is forthcoming in POETRY, Rumpus, and World Literature Review among others. Her poems have been produced and performed by the Poetic Theater Productions Presents Company in NYC. Her published poetry collections include Words Like Love, Why Storms are Named After People and Bullets Remain Nameless, and Words To Love By.
A featured TEDxABQ speaker, you can watch her talk Igniting Healing here. For 10 years, she served as the Director of the University of Colorado Boulder’s Upward Bound program; during her time there she served hundreds of Indigenous youth. She also co-founded Sing Our Rivers Red’s MMIW earring exhibit and Dream Warriors, an Indigenous artist collective. She is a published author who travels sharing her music, poetry, creative writing workshops, and Heartwork empowerment workshops with communities, students, and educators.
Tanaya is also a Healing-Centered Coach with training from the Blooming Willow Coaching Program. She provides one-on-one coaching and group coaching as well.
If you’d like to schedule or book Tanaya for a poetry performance, speaking engagement, keynote, reading, workshop, manuscript critique, book review, school visit, lecture, or coaching session please contact her at: tanaya.winder@gmail.com
Tanaya Winder 