Halito, Ikana!

 

Author. Storyteller. Literary researcher. Indigenous woman. Seattleite.

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Tiffany Desiree believes stories survive through us. Sometimes they live in books; other times, they endure in a recipe, a photograph, a prayer, or a family joke told so many times that everyone remembers it differently—yet somehow knows exactly what it means. Much of Desiree's writing lives in that precise space between memory and history.

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Based in Seattle, she is an Indigenous author and part of LWW Literary Press, a boutique independent publishing company. Her rich heritage encompasses Waccamaw-Siouan, Lumbee, Keetoowah, and Muscogee ancestral lines. Tracing back to the historic Oklahannali (Six Towns) District and rooted in her family's maternal history, she belongs to the Luksi Okla (Turtle People) Clan, passed down from her great-grandfather, Oka Banatha. Coming from a non-reservation family, her culture was carried forward not through bureaucratic systems, but through lived experience, faith, traditional naming practices, and the fierce determination to remember where you came from.

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This history isn’t simply something she researches—it is the lens through which she sees the world. Moving freely between children's literature, poetry, and spiritual fiction, her work explores cultural survival, race, and the complicated classifications imposed on Indigenous descendants, including Free People of Color. She is particularly drawn to the narratives that become distorted when reduced to a box on a census form, a line in a ledger, or an archival label chosen by an outsider.

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Consequently, Desiree's bibliography doesn't fit neatly onto one shelf—and she likes it that way. Her projects range from the vibrant world of the Fruity Land children's series to An African Spiritual Horror Collection, which examines the crossroads of fear and the unseen world. In her deeply personal literary works—such as Nature, Sex, and Culture: A Tree of Discombobulated Thoughts, How the Indian Beat the Black Out of Me, and My Private Canon: Forged in Malice, Chanted in Isolation to the Christ of Thorns—she acts as a creative archivist. Both How the Indian Beat the Black Out of Me and My Private Canon serve as historical records, embedding comprehensive timelines, event logs, and primary source documentation from her own lineage. Within their pages, she surfaces rare historical photographs, Dawes Rolls allocations, and dynamic case files (ACTs) of her Indigenous ancestors who were forced to navigate surviving on paper classified as Free People of Color.

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Before devoting herself fully to authorship, Desiree spent years moving through Seattle's media and creative communities. Her diverse professional background includes public-affairs reporting for KBCS 91.3, promotional work with Movin 92.5, acting as Catherine Hall in Perjury, and founding the global INFJ - The Outgoing Introvert community. She graduated with honors from Washington State University in 2012, where she was an active part of the university's spoken-word and literary circles.

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When she isn't writing or exploring historical rabbit holes, Tiffany can usually be found hiking a Pacific Northwest trail, enjoying music, or sharing a good meal with her husband, Joshua.

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Ultimately, her work is about remembering. Remembering people. Remembering places. Remembering the invisible things families carried when they had to leave everything else behind—and honoring the stories that prove they survived.