About Brenda
Brenda Kay Beck is an award-winning author, film producer, and follower of the Navajo Beauty Way.
In 1991, at the height of her professional career in magazine publishing and fundraising for the arts, Brenda married a Navajo medicine man and began a lifelong quest to understand and follow the teachings of the Navajo Beauty Way. Today she is passionate about honoring and helping to preserve the stories and teachings of this rich Native American culture, and to help the diné, (Navajo people) whenever she can.
Brenda Kay Beck’s book and film projects reflect her personal experiences in over thirty years of Native American Church and traditional Navajo Beauty Way ceremonies, including her daughter’s kinaaldá, the four-day Navajo puberty ceremony.
Her upcoming memoir, Changing Woman Speaks: From Lost to Found in the Navajo Beauty Way has been named Finalist, Adult Nonfiction in the 2025 San Francisco Writers Conference Writing Contest; and 2nd Place, Unpublished Memoir in the 2024 SouthWest Writers Contest. Her first book, Kinaaldá: A Navajo Girl’s Journey Into Womanhood, was self-published in 2012 and reprinted in 2014, 2018, and 2021 for private distribution. Brenda is a contributing writer to The Words You Were Looking For, published February 2026 by San Francisco Writers Conference; and Mosaic Voices, published December 2024 by Southwest Writers. She has been a speaker at The Celebration in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and book club and reading circles in California, Arizona, New Mexico, the UK, and Queensland, Australia.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, the Diné Elders Film Project helped a 100-year- old Navajo medicine man save his ancient creation stories on film for his descendants. Fugue for a Spiritual Life, a 2024 documentary filmed in the UK, has won twenty-one international film festival awards. Its sequel, Fugue for a Truthful Life, will premier Fall, 2026 in fiscal partnership with the Utah Film Center. Her production company, Purple Root Productions, LLC is based in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Brenda Kay Beck is a member of SouthWest Writers (SWW), National Association of Memoir Writers (NAMW), Nonfiction Authors Association (NAA), and Hay House Writers Community. While editing her manuscript in Brisbane, Australia, she is also a member of Brisbane Writers and the Queensland Writers Center.
For more information about book releases, film launches and events,
please contact Brenda Kay Beck here.