Biography
Jim Miller is a native San Diegan and a graduate of the MFA program at San Diego State University. In addition to his MFA in Fiction, he has a Ph.D. in American Culture Studies from Bowling Green State University in Ohio. He teaches English, Humanities and Labor Studies at San Diego City College and lives in San Diego with his wife, Kelly Mayhew, and son, Walter.
Miller is the author of the poetry collections Into the Bardo (Kelsay Books, 2024) and Paradise and Other Lost Places (San Diego City Works Press, 2024), and his novels include Last Days in Ocean Beach (San Diego City Works Press, 2018), Flash (AK Press, 2010), and Drift (University of Oklahoma Press, 2007 and 2024). He is also co-author of a history of San Diego, Under the Perfect Sun: The San Diego Tourists Never See (with Mike Davis and Kelly Mayhew on The New Press, 2003 and 2005) and a cultural studies book on working class sports fandom, Better to Reign in Hell: Inside the Raiders Fan Empire (with Kelly Mayhew on The New Press, 2005). In addition to this he is the editor of Sunshine/Noir: Writing from San Diego and Tijuana (San Diego City Works Press, 2005), Sunshine/Noir II: Writing from San Diego and Tijuana (with Kelly Mayhew on San Diego City Works Press, 2015), Sunshine/Noir III: Writing from San Diego and Tijuana (with Kelly Mayhew on San Diego City Works Press, 2025), and Democracy in Education; Education for Democracy (AFT 1931, 2007). He has published poetry, fiction, and non-fiction in a wide range of journals and other publications, and, along with Kelly Mayhew and Doug Porter, has a Substack journal called The Jumping-Off Place as well as a weekly column in the blog Words and Deeds, a monthly column in the San Diego Union-Tribune's"Community Voices Project," and he previously wrote for the San Diego Free Press and the OB Rag.