Jim Wayne Miller

Jim Wayne Miller (October 21, 1936 – August 18, 1996) was an American poet and educator who had a major influence on literature in the Appalachian region.

Biography

Early years Jim Wayne Miller was born on October 21, 1936, in Leicester, North Carolina, to James Woodward Miller and Edith (Smith) Miller. He was raised with five brothers and sisters on a seventy-acre farm. His father was a service manager at a Firestone Complete Auto Care in Asheville.

Education and career Jim Wayne Miller graduated from Berea College in Kentucky in 1958 with a bachelor's degree in English. He had studied abroad in Minden, Westphalia, Germany, the summer before his junior year on a homestay scholarship awarded by the Experiment in International Living.

Miller was promoted to associate professor of German at Western Kentucky University in 1966 and to full professor in 1970.

While on sabbatical in Germany in 1972, Miller met Austrian poet Emil Lerperger. Miller would later translate a volume of his poetry and also become his literary executor. The following year, he began his long association with the Hindman Settlement School Appalachian Writers' Workshop. In his brief biography of Jim Wayne Miller for Appalachian Heritage, George Brosi writes that Miller "is quite simply an icon in the field of Appalachian Literature—one of its earliest and most ardent supporters."

Miller was elected chair of the Appalachian Studies Association in 1982. The same year, he received the Western Kentucky University Award for public service. For two years, beginning in 1984, he was visiting professor at the James R. Stokely Institute for Liberal Arts Education at the University of Tennessee. He also served as poet-in-residence at Centre College in Danville, Kentucky. Mary Ellen Miller (1935–2018) is the author of a book of poems, The Poet's Wife Speaks (2011). Jim Wayne Miller was diagnosed with lung cancer in June 1996. He died at home on August 18.

He received several awards for his novel Newfound (1989), including the Best Book of the Year citation from Learning Magazine and Best Book of the Year from Booklist. The film won a Golden Gate Award at the San Francisco International Film Festival. It was broadcast on PBS stations.