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Terra Oliveira is a writer, visual artist, and the founding editor of Recenter Press. She's written four books of poetry, including her most recent, Itinerant Songs (July 2025), and a spoken word album of Itinerant Songs is set to be released with Hello America Stereo Cassette in Spring 2026. Her poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Bamboo Ridge, The Common, Puerto del Sol, Hawai'i Pacific Review, and more.
Born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, her family lineages migrated from the Hawaiian Islands, the Azores, Southern China, Guadalajara, and throughout Europe. Her work is an extension of her core practices and beliefs: in recovery, community building, pilgrimage and retreat, and peoples' movements globally. She received a B.A. in documentary film production from San Francisco State University in 2014, and her short films screened at Napa Valley Film Festival, Seattle International Film Festival, CAAMFest, and elsewhere. Oliveira successfully funded a feminist photo book on Kickstarter in 2015, and her poetry and illustration collection, An Old Blue Light, won the Where Are You Press Poetry Contest in the same year. While she worked on her creative projects, she worked on farms in Sonoma County, CA, and she traveled from Southern to Northern India in 2016, volunteering at Sadhana Forest Ecovillage in Auroville, doing a month-long artist residency in the Western Ghats, practicing Hatha Yoga at Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Dhanwantari Ashram, and on pilgrimage through Parvatti Valley. In March 2017, Oliveira was an artist-in-residence at The Schoolhouse at Mutianyu at the Great Wall of China. Shortly afterwards, she moved to Philadelphia, PA, where she worked several jobs while pursuing her creative projects: as an After School Leader at the Free Library of Philadelphia, as a Nature Arts Instructor and Camp Counselor, and as a wide-ranging gig worker. Along with her creative pursuits, she practiced and facilitated Nonviolent Communication workshops, organized with the Philadelphia Liberation Center, studied with the Saturday Free School for Philosophy and Black Liberation, and sat and served a handful of Vipassana meditation courses in the tradition of S.N. Goenka. In 2022, Oliveira walked The Way of St. James from Lisbon, Portugal to Santiago de Compostela, Spain, where she documented her 35mm photography book, The Road Is Long & Beautiful. In 2023, she moved back to the Bay Area to be closer to family and manage two bookstores in Marin. Since February 2026, she’s been a residential work practice apprentice and student of Soto Zen. |
