Mirranda Burton was born in Auckland, New Zealand and grew up in Australia. Mirranda completed an Advanced Diploma of Visual Arts at the North Adelaide School of Art in 1995. Burton then lived for a time in the UK and France prior to returning to Australia where, based in Melbourne, she undertook a Bachelor of Multimedia Design at Swinburne University.
Burton has specialised in 'animation, printmaking and writing comix'. Her stories depict 'a myriad of moments, from the mountain peaks of Morocco to lettuce invasions, to rare meetings with caterpillar psychiatrists and vacuum cleaner genies'. Her comics have appeared in Tango and Going Down Swinging since 2006. In 2010 she won the Scenario Prize at the Fumetto International Comix Festival in Lucerne, Switzerland for her comic strip P. S.
Her graphic novel Hidden (2011) was joint winner for the Aurealis Awards for Excellence in Australian Speculative Fiction (best graphic novel category), and her graphic novel Underground: Marsupial Outlaws and Other Rebels of Australia's War in Vietnam was joint winner for Comic Arts Awards of Australia (Bronze award) and winner of the Readings Prize (Young Adult Book prize).