Sierra grew up in rural New York, attended Middlebury College in Vermont, moved West in 2011, and settled five years ago in Oregon. As a journalist and essayist, she writes for magazines and recently published her first book, Yellow Bird: Oil, Murder, and a Woman’s Search for Justice in Indian Country, which won the Oregon Book Award and was named a best book of the year by The New York Times. She has taught writing at Middlebury and UC Berkeley, and she’s thrilled to join HMI for the first time this summer. When she’s not toiling at her writing desk, Sierra is reading by a river or exploring the Cascades on skis, bike, or foot.