Eugene Ethelbert Miller (born November 20, 1950) is an African-American poet, teacher and literary activist, based in Washington, DC. He is the author of several collections of poetry and two memoirs, was the editor of Poet Lore magazine, and is the host of the weekly WPFW morning radio show On the Margin.

Life and career Miller was born in The Bronx, New York. He received his B.A. from Howard University. He is the author of several books of poetry and two memoirs and is the editor of multiple poetry anthologies. His work has appeared in numerous publications, including Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Poet Lore and Sojourners.

Miller was the founder and director of the Ascension Poetry Reading Series, one of the oldest literary series in the Washington area. He was director of Howard University's African-American Resource Center for more than 40 years from 1974. Miller has taught at various schools, including American University, Emory & Henry University, George Mason University, Harpeth Hall School and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He was also a core faculty member of the writing seminars at Bennington College. He did work for Operation Homecoming for the National Endowment for the Humanities.

He currently serves as board chairperson of the Institute for Policy Studies. He was also on the boards of Split This Rock and the Writer's Center, and from 2002 to 2019 was co-editor of Poet Lore magazine, the oldest poetry journal in the US. He is former chair of the Humanities Council of Washington, D.C., and has served on the boards of the AWP, the Edmund Burke School, PEN American Center, PEN/Faulkner Foundation, and the Washington Area Lawyer for the Arts. He hosts a weekly morning radio show on WPFW called On the Margin.

In 1979, the mayor of Washington, D.C., Marion Barry, proclaimed September 28, 1979, as E. Ethelbert Miller Day. On May 21, 2001, an E. Ethelbert Miller Day was also proclaimed by the mayor of Jackson, Tennessee.

Miller's papers are held at Emory & Henry University and George Washington University.

Awards and honors

1982: Washington, D.C., Mayor's Art Award for Literature 1988: Public Humanities Award from the D.C. Humanities Council 1993: Columbia Merit Award 1994: Honorary citizen of the city of Baltimore 1994: PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award (for In Search of Color Everywhere) 1995: O. B. Hardison Jr. Poetry Prize 1996: Honorary doctorate of literature from Emory & Henry College 1997: Stephen Henderson Poetry Award from the African American Literature and Culture Society 2003: District of Columbia Public Library DC WE READ One City One Book program selection (for Fathering Words) 2004: Fulbright Scholarship 2015: Washington, D.C. Hall of Fame induction 2016: George Garrett Award for Outstanding Community Service in Literature from the Association of Writers & Writing Programs 2016: DC Mayor's Arts Award for Distinguished Honor 2018: Gamma Xi Phi induction 2022: Howard Zinn Lifetime Achievement Award from the Peace and Justice Studies Association 2025: Reginald Lockett Lifetime Achievement Award from PEN Oakland

Publications

Poetry

The Fire This Time: 1992 and Beyond Los Angeles. White Fields Press. 1993.

The Collected Poems of E. Ethelbert Miller. Edited by Kirsten Porter. Willow Books. 2016. . If God Invented Baseball: Poems. Simon and Schuster. 2018. . When Your Wife Has Tommy John Surgery and Other Baseball Stories. Simon and Schuster. 2021. .

Anthologies

Memoirs

References

External links Biography at the Academy of American Poets Poems at Beltway Poetry Quarterly Interview with Grace Cavalieri Interview by On Being Interview with Indran Amirthanayagam