Miranda was born at UCLA hospital and raised in and around Los Angeles, California, until the age of five, when her mother moved her to Washington State. Miranda's father grew up as the last generation to live in a cohesive tribal Chumash unit (a compound in Santa Barbara). Miranda and her parents worked to re-establish tribal ties and reunite tribal members. The Esselen Nation is currently petitioning the federal government for recognition.

Miranda's mother died in November 2001.

Deborah Miranda has two children, Miranda and Danny. Her partner is Margo Solod, a poet and cook from Virginia.

Starting academia late in life, Miranda earned her Ph.D. in English at age 40 from the University of Washington in 2001. She taught at Pacific Lutheran University for three years. Miranda is currently Assistant Professor of English at Washington and Lee University, where she teaches Creative Writing (poetry), Native American Literatures, Women's Literature, Poetry as Literature, and composition.

Deborah Miranda has been selected for the 2007-2008 Institute of American Cultures (IAC) Visiting Scholars Award at the University of California - Los Angeles. She will research and teach at UCLA during her sabbatical.

Miranda's work has been published in the Bellingham Review, Bellowing Ark, California Quarterly, Calyx, Callaloo, Cimarron Review, News From Native California, Poets On, Raven Chronicles, Sojurner, Weber Studies Journal, West Wind Review, and Wilderness.

Miranda was selected for the 2007-2008 Institute of American Cultures (IAC) Visiting Scholars Award at the University of California - Los Angeles.citation needed

The Zen of La Llorona was nominated for the Lambda Literary Award in 2005.

In 2001 Miranda received the Connie Leach Award for Outstanding Academic Achievement in achieving a Doctoral Degree from the Seattle Indian Services Commission. In 2000, she was named Writer of the Year for Poetry for her book, Indian Cartography, by the Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers. She also received a Hedgebrook Writers Residency that year.citation needed

Miranda received the First Book Awards' Diane Decorah Award for Poetry in 1997 from the Native Writers' Circle of the Americas. In 1995, she was the Pacific Northwest Writers Conference Prizewinner in poetry. She was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 1994. In 1993, she won the 49th Parallel Poetry Prize and obtained a Tacoma Arts Commission Grant to plan and carry out a day long arts workshop for mothers.citation needed

Books

The Zen of La Llorona, Salt Publishing, 2005.

Deer, a chapbook.

Indian Cartography, Greenfield Review Press, 1999, Cover Art by Kathleen Smith (Dry Creek Pomo/Bodega Miwok)

Anthologies

• Red Ink: Love and Erotica, University of Arizona American Indian Studies Program.
• A Fierce Brightness: Twenty-Five Years of Women's Poetry, Margarita Donnelly, Beverly McFarland, Micki Reaman (Editors), Calyx Books.
• The Dirt Is Red Here: Art & Poetry from Contemporary Native California, Margaret Dubin (Editor), Heyday Books, 2002.
• This Bridge We Call Home: 20 Years After This Bridge Called My Back, Gloria Anzaldua & AnaLouise Keating (Editors), Routledge.
• Through the Eye of the Deer, Carolyn Dunn & Carol Zitzer-Comfort (Editors), Aunt Lute Books, 1999.
• Women: Images and Realities - A Multicultural Anthology, Nancy Schniedewind, Amy Kesselman & Lily D. McNair (Editors), Mayfield Pub., 1999.
• the Indian Summer issue of phati'tude
• Durable Breath: Contemporary Native American Poetry, John E. Smelcer, D. L. Birchfield (Editors), Salmon Run Pub.

Journal Articles & Book Reviews

"What's Wrong with a Little Fantasy? Storytelling from the (still) Ivory Tower"in American Indian Quarterly, vol. 27, no. 1&2, ed. by Devon A. Mihesuah .

"Dildos, Hummingbirds and Driving Her Crazy: Searching for American Indian Women's Love Poetry and Erotics."Frontiers. Edited by Ines Hernandez-Avila.

"Dildos, Hummingbirds and Driving Her Crazy: Searching for American Indian Women's Love Poetry and Erotics."in Reading Native Women: Critical/Creative Representations, edited by Ines Hernandez-Avila. Altamira Press.

"A String of Textbooks: Artifacts of Composition Pedagogy in Indian Boarding Schools."The Journal of Teaching Writing. Vol. 16.2, Fall 2000.

"I Don't Speak the Language that has the Sentences: An Interview with Paula Gunn Allen"in Sojourner: The Women's Forum. February 1999, Vol. 24, No. 2.

"A Strong Woman Pursuing Her God: Linda Hogan's Power"in Sojourner: The Women's Forum. November 2000, Vol. 26, No. 3.

Fiction Posing as Truth: A Critical Review of Ann Rinaldi's My Heart is on the Ground: The Diary of Nannie Little Rose, a Sioux Girl, with Marlene Atleo, Naomi Caldwell, Barbara Landis, Jean Mendoza, LaVera Rose, Beverly Slapin, and Cynthia Smith. Also published in Re-thinking Schools: An Urban Education Journal (Summer 1999); also published in Multicultural Review (September 1999, Vol. 8, No. 3)

Review of Why I Can't Read Wallace Stegner and Other Essays: A Tribal Voice by Elizabeth Cook-Lynn in Sojourner: The Women's Forum. January 1997, Vol. 22, No. 5.

Review of Yellow Woman and a Beauty of the Spiritby Leslie Marmon Silko in Sojourner: The Women's Forum. November 1996, Vol. 22, No. 93.

Interviews and Autobiographical Essays

Bad Girls'/'Good Girls' : Women, Sex, and Power in the Nineties, Donna Perry, Nan Bauer Maglin (Editors), Rutgers University Press.

Work to Do & Dream On, 1991 from The Raven's Chronicles

Lunatic or Lover/Madman or Shaman: the Role of the Poet in Contemporary Culture(s) from The Raven's Chronicles

Deer & Petroglyphs in ASAIL

Swarm

The Zen of La Llorona

A Trick of Grace

Clean

Highway 126

Burning the Baskets

Migration

I Am Not a Witness

Stories I Tell My Daughter in Weber Studies

Indian Cartography in Weber Studies

Baskets in Weber Studies

Sorrow as a Woman, read by Deborah at Bumbershoot 2001 in Seattle [mp3]

Stories I Tell My Daughter, read by Deborah at Bumbershoot 2001 in Seattle [mp3]