Leonarda Carranza was raised in Tkaronto and born in El Salvador to a mixed-race family of Afro-Indigenous ancestry. She currently resides in Brampton, Ontario, part of the Treaty Lands and Territory of the Mississaugas of the Credit. She holds a PhD in social justice education from the University of Toronto. Her children's book, Abuelita and Me, will be published in 2022. She is the winner of Briarpatch Magazine's Writing in the Margins contest, was shortlisted for PRISM International's short forms contest, and won Room's 2018 short forms contest for her piece, White Spaces Brown Bodies.