Singer-songwriter Mirah visits Big Sur.

Mirah Yom Tov Zeitlyn, known simply as Mirah to her fans, discovered her musical potential basically by accident, while she was a student at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington.

“I had an assignment to write a song for a performing arts class I was taking,” she says. “Then I didn’t stop [writing songs]. I never wanted to stop.”

Mirah was drawn to Olympia by the spirit of the D.I.Y. indie scene of artists and musicians there, but she wasn’t a musician when she first enrolled.

She taught herself to play guitar, but didn’t perform or record music until after she graduated.

“When I came of record-buying age, it was the ’80s, and there was amazing pop music. I loved Cyndi Lauper, Prince and Madonna,” she says.

But her first truly significant record purchase was Sinead O’Connor’s The Lion and the Cobra. Mirah shared O’Connor’s sense of social activism: She participated in peace walks to protest nuclear proliferation, sometimes leaving middle school and high school for weeks at a time.

In Olympia, Mirah witnessed the genesis of the feminist riot grrl musical revolution, led by locally based bands like Sleater-Kinney and Bikini Kill.

Although she supported the scene, she has never self-identified as a riot grrl. “I felt too nerdy, actually,” she says, but adds, “[The scene] was an awakening. It helped open a lot of doors for me.”

Her music does not fit the fiery punk sound of that era. Instead her songs range from wistful and melancholic lullabies to experimental pop involving synthesizers and electric guitar riffs. Her 2014 release, Changing Light, burns slowly, like a candle dripping tears left from a devastating break-up and trouble finding a home.

The album was a critical success and one that she describes as “meant to be like a storybook, meant to be interpretive.”

On the last track of Changing Light, “Radiomind,” she soothes herself with newfound wisdom, cooing, “Old tapes and old mistakes are teachers.”

She is familiar with collaborating with other indie musicians, and has worked with Mary Timony of Ex Hex and with Phil Elvrum of the Microphones and Mt. Eerie, among others. Her latest partnership is with composer Jherek Bischoff, who arranged her original songs to be played by classical string instruments.

Mirah now calls Brooklyn home, and reports she has found personal calmness among the chaos of big-city life. “Maybe that’s a good thing,” she says.

MIRAH 7pm. Wednesday, June 14, Henry Miller Memorial Library, 48603 Highway 1, Big Sur. $33. 667-2574, www.folkyeah.com