Terra is the granddaughter of sharecroppers, born in the early 1950s and raised in a large extended family in a banjo and fiddle tradition, rich with storytelling and music. She came of age in Compton, California, where her childhood was divided between the city and camping in the Sierra Nevada mountains, pulling dinner from a lake. Of mixed descent, including Cherokee, Lenape, Seneca and German, her work is infused and shaped by her mixed-blood identity and her connection to the landscape. She lives with her family on the northern edge of the Central California coast, based between the ocean and redwoods, and calls the mountains home.
Terra Trevor is an essayist, and the author of two memoirs: We Who Walk the Seven Ways (University of Nebraska Press), and Pushing up the Sky. She is a contributor to fifteen books, and her essays are in numerous publications. Her work and portrait are featured in Tending the Fire: Native Voices and Portraits (University of New Mexico Press). Her work is also included in Children of the Dragonfly: Native American Voices on Child Custody and Education (The University of Arizona Press), The People Who Stayed: Southeastern Indian Writing After Removal (University of Oklahoma Press), Unpapered: Writers Consider Native American Identity and Cultural Belonging (University of Nebraska Press), Voices Confronting Pediatric Brain Tumors (Johns Hopkins University Press), Take a Stand: Art Against Hate, and in other books, anthologies and literary journals.