Kei Miller

Kei Miller is a Jamaican poet, fiction writer, essayist, and blogger. He is also a professor of English & Creative Writing. His first book was a collection of short stories, Fear of Stones and Other Stories (2006), shortlisted for a Commonwealth Writers Prize.

Kei Miller was born and raised in Kingston. He learned English at the University of the West Indies and moved to England to study for an MA in Creative Writing at Manchester Metropolitan University in 2004. Miller also earned a Ph.D. in English Literature from the University of Glasgow.

In 2006, Miller released his debut poetry book, Kingdom of Empty Bellies. Shortly after, he published a collection of short stories titled The Fear of Stones, which delves into issues of Jamaican homophobia.

His first novel, The Same Earth, was published in 2008, followed by The Last Warner Woman in 2010.

In 2014, Kei Miller won the Forward Prize for his collection of poems, The Cartographer Tries to Chart a Path to Zion, which was highly praised by Hilary Mantel.

Miller's third novel, Augustown, won the 2017 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature. The book tells stories of hardscrabble Augustown, a former hamlet on the outskirts of St. Andrew founded by slaves freed in 1838.

In 2022, his most recent collection of essays, Things I Have Withheld, was shortlisted for the Jhalak Prize.

His academic honors include serving as an International Writing Fellow at the University of Iowa, Visiting Writer at York University in Canada, working in the Department of Library Services in the British Virgin Islands and serving as a Vera Rubin Fellow at Yaddo.

Until 2014, Miller held the position of Reader at the University of Glasgow.

Kei Miller is currently a Professor Of English and creative writing at the University of Exeter. He lives in Glasgow.

Photo credit: Twitter @keimiller