Terra Trevor is an essayist, a memoirist, a contributor to fifteen books, and the author of two memoirs, We Who Walk the Seven Ways (University of Nebraska Press), and Pushing up the Sky: A Mother’s Story (KAAN: Korean Adoptee Adoptive Family Network). Her essays are widely published in anthologies, including Tending the Fire: Native Voices and Portraits (University of New Mexico Press), 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), and Unpapered: Writers Consider Native American Identity and Cultural Belonging (University of Nebraska Press).
Of Cherokee, Lenape, Seneca and German descent, Terra is the granddaughter of Oklahoma sharecroppers. She was born in the early 1950s and was raised in a large extended family rich with banjo music and storytelling. She came of age in Southeast Los Angeles with roots in Compton, California where her life was divided between the city and the Sierra Nevada and San Bernardino Mountains. Known for her storytelling and lyric prose, Terra writes stories steeped in themes of home, place and belonging, her identity as a mixed-blood, and her connection to the landscape.
She lives with her family on the Northern California Coast, based between the ocean and redwoods.