Mary Miller

Mary Miller is a native Mississippian who was born in Jackson. Her professors at the University of Southern Mississippi, Frederick Barthelme and Steven Barthelme taught her much about writing as they are writers themselves. As a graduate student, she attended the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas in Austin.

Less Shiny, Miller’s first chapbook collection of short stories, was published in 2008 by Magic Helicopter Press. A full-length collection of short stories entitled Big World was published in 2009 and is now in its third printing. Her first novel, The Last Days of California, was published in 2014 to wide acclaim.

In it, the Metcalf family is on a road trip from Alabama to the Pacific Ocean, where they hope to witness the rapture. Miller says she grew up Catholic in the South where most people are Protestant and so did not know about the idea of the rapture until she grew up. The story is told from the point of view of a teenager named Jess, who is not all that interested in the reason for the family’s trip.

In 2014, she was the Grisham Writer-in-Residence at the University of Mississippi. She was also a featured speaker at the 2014 Eudora Welty Symposium at the W in Columbus, Mississippi. She is currently Visiting Assistant Professor at Mississippi University for Women. She has been a participant at the Mississippi Book Festival in Jackson. Her second novel, Always Happy Hour, was published in 2017.