Deborah Miranda
An enrolled member of the Ohlone-Costanoan Esselen Nation of California, poet Deborah A. Miranda was born in Los Angeles to an Esselen/Chumash father and a mother of French and Jewish ancestry. She grew up in Washington State, earning a BS in teaching moderate special-needs children from Wheelock College in 1983 and an MA and PhD in English from the University of Washington. Miranda’s collections of poetry include Raised by Humans (2015); Indian Cartography: Poems (1999), and The Zen of La Llorona (2005), . Miranda also received the 2000 Writer of the Year Award for Poetry from the Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers. Her mixed-genre collection Bad Indians: A Tribal Memoir (2013) won a Gold Medal from the Independent Publisher’s Association and the PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Literary Award, and was shortlisted for the William Saroyan Award. She is Thomas H. Broadus professor of English at Washington and Lee University.
- Listen to Deborah Miranda read and discuss her poem "Indigenous Physics" at the Library of Congress
- Her mixed-genre collection Bad Indians: A Tribal Memoir (2013) won a Gold Medal from the Independent Publisher’s Association and the PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Literary Award, and was shortlisted for the William Saroyan Award.