Terra Trevor

Terra Trevor is an essayist and a memoirist. She is the author of We Who Walk the Seven Ways (University of Nebraska Press), Pushing up the Sky (KAAN: Korean American Adoptee Adoptive Family Network), and the forthcoming High Tide in the Redwoods. 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), Unpapered: Writers Consider Native American Identity and Cultural Belonging (University of Nebraska Press), Take A Stand: Art Against Hate (A Raven Chronicles Anthology), Birthed From Scorched Hearts: Women Respond to War (Fulcrum Publishing), Voices Confronting Pediatric Brain Tumors (Johns Hopkins University Press), Unraveling the Spreading Cloth of Time: Indigenous Thoughts Concerning the Universe (Renegade Planets Publishing),Women in a Golden State: California Poets at 60 and Beyond (Gunpowder Press), and Mixed Roots: Writers on Multiracial Identity & Both/And Belonging (Beacon Press).

Terra is the granddaughter of sharecroppers. She was born in the early 1950s and was raised in a large extended family rich with banjo music and storytelling. She grew up 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. Of mixed descent, including Cherokee, Lenape, Seneca, German, with ties to Korean, her stories are steeped in themes of place, belonging, mixed roots, and her connection to the landscape. 

About my life and work

While collaborating with other authors I discovered my passion, my deep love of working with a collective of voices, with each writer telling our single story, working together to bring forth a whole book.

I’ve been writing and publishing for more than four decades. The first twenty years I wrote feature articles, essays and magazine columns. My readership grew and in 2006 I published my first book. A new path opened when I began receiving invitations to contribute essays to anthologies. Searching for a place to stand, I found my voice while writing stories steeped in themes of home, place and belonging, infused and shaped by my identity as a mixed-blood.

While collaborating with other authors I discovered my passion, my deep love of working with a collective of voices, with each writer telling our single story, working together to bring forth a whole book. In addition to my solo work, I’m a contributor to fifteen books in Native American and Indigenous Studies, Native literature, nonfiction and memoir.

For every success we have I believe it’s important to remember how we got there. I wouldn’t have been able to accomplish all that I have without guidance from good people who gave their time to me, mentoring, shepherding and guiding me. I owe much gratitude to my literary elders who showed me the way and taught me to grow right as an elder and to hold the door open, give back and help others where I can. 

There have been years when I wrote within the nooks and crannies of my life. Balancing motherhood and writing, with a baby on my lap, the dogs sleeping at my feet, while the cat walked across my keyboard. While working as a director with American Indian Health. As a coordinator with a pediatric brain tumor organization, and the mother of a son living with a brain tumor. As a director of volunteers with Visiting Nurse and Hospice Care. Volunteering with KAAN: Korean Adoptee Adoptive Family Network as one of the founders and early leaders, beginning in 1998 through 2016. In South Korea with KAAN’s Friends of Korea Family Exchange Program. As the founding editor of River, Blood, And Corn Literary Journal: A Community of Native Voices. At a youth crisis shelter for at-risk teens and foster youth in transition. With CASA as a Court Appointed Special Advocate for foster youth and teens. I have also taught creative writing in writers’ and storytellers’ workshops and mentoring corps.

I live with my family on the Northern California Coast, based between the ocean and redwoods. Now, in my seventies, I’m still writing within the nooks and crannies of my days and nights, often after mornings of wandering hills and valleys with grandkids and dogs. I give readings, sit on discussion panels and visit with book groups. Thankful for this opportunity, this writing life, this privilege.