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 European ancestry. She grew up in Washington State, earned 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 in 2001. Miranda's collections of poetry include Raised by Humans (2015); Indian Cartography: Poems (1999), winner of the Diane Decorah Memorial First Book Award from the Native Writers' Circle of the Americas; and The Zen of La Llorona (2005), nominated for a Lambda Literary Award. 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 Publishers Association and the PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Literary Award and was shortlisted for the William Saroyan Award. She is Thomas H. Broadus, Jr. professor of English at Washington and Lee University.