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Sorrow and grief can be found in that place within the blues where words end

and moans begin. The singer is speechless because the hurt is so bad.

The only thing one can do is ride the song

 

 

Sketch Bio E. Ethelbert Miller

E. Ethelbert Miller,  former chair of the Humanities Council of Washington DC, is a core faculty member of the Bennington Writing Seminars at Bennington College.  He has been the director of the African American Resource Center at Howard University since 1974.

His In Search of Color Everywhere (1994) was awarded the 1994 PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award. The anthology was also a Book of the Month Club selection. 

Mr. Miller was one of the 60 American authors selected and honored by Laura Bush and The White House at the First National Book Festival, September 8, 2001.

Mr. Miller has served as a visiting professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and adjunct professor at American University.  In 1996 he was the Jessie Ball DuPont Scholar at Emory & Henry College. He was scholar-in-residence at George Mason University for the Spring 2000 semester, and the 2001 Carell Writer-in-Residence at Harpeth Hall School in Nashville, Tennessee.

Mr. Miller is the founder and director of the Ascension Poetry Reading Series,  one of the oldest literary series in Washington, D.C.  He currently serves on the boards of the Institute for Policy Studies, and Washington Area Lawyers for the Arts.

He is also an advisory editor for the African American Review, an advisory board  member of Arts & Letters: Journal of Contemporary Culture, a contributing editor to Callaloo and Editorial Advisor for the Black Issues Book Review. Mr. Miller is one of the editors of Poet-Lore magazine.  Mr. Miller is a Commissioner  for the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities. He is an honorary member of the Arts Club of Washington.

Mr. Miller is a former board member of the PEN American Center, The PEN/Faulkner Foundation, the Edmund Burke School and the Associating Writing Programs.

For several years he hosted the popular weekly radio program Maiden Voyage on WDCU-FM,as well as Vertigo on the Air on WPFW-FM.  He is often  heard on National Public Radio (NPR). He currently hosts Humanities Profiled on DCTV.

In 1979, the Mayor of Washington D.C. proclaimed September 28, 1979 as E. Ethelbert Miller Day. Mr. Miller was awarded the Mayor's Art Award for  Literature in 1982. He received the Public Humanities Award from the D.C. Humanities Council in 1988. In 1993 the literary community of Washington awarded him the Columbia Merit Award. On July 17, 1994, the Mayor of Baltimore made him an honorary citizen of the city of Baltimore.

Mr. Miller was awarded the 1995 O.B. Hardison Jr. Poetry Prize. In May 1997 he was presented  with the Stephen Henderson Poetry Award by the African American Literature and Culture Society.  In 2001, the Mayor of Jackson, Tennessee, proclaimed May 21, 2001 as E. Ethelbert Miller Day.

Mr. Miller received an honorary doctorate of literature from Emory & Henry College on May 18, 1996.

In 1997, Mr. Miller working with the Inter-Governmental Philatelic Corporation (IGPC) was responsible for placing twelve African American writers on postage  stamps issued by Ghana and Uganda. The writers honored were: Maya Angelou, Rita Dove, Mari Evans, Henry Louis Gates Jr, Charles Johnson, June Jordan, Toni Cade Bambara, Sterling A. Brown, Alex Haley, Stephen Henderson, Zora Neale Hurston and Richard Wright.

Mr. Miller has traveled to Iraq, England, Russia, Cuba , Tanzania, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Nicaragua. He presently lives in Washington D.C. with his wife Rev. Denise King-Miller and his two children, Jasmine-Simone (Boston University) and Nyere-Gibran (Gonzaga).  

Source:  http://www.eethelbertmiller.com/biography.html\

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Chronological Bibliography of Works by E. Ethelbert Miller

Miller, E. Ethelbert.  Andromeda. Boulder Creek, CA: Chiva P, 1974.

_____. The Land of Smiles and The Land of No Smiles.  Boulder Creek, CA: Chiva P 1974.

Synergy: An Anthology of Washington D.C. Black Poetry. Edited by Ahmos Zu-Bolton, II and E. Ethelbert Miller. Washington D.C.: Energy BlackSouth P,  1975.

 

Women Surviving Massacres and Men. Ed. E. Ethelbert Miller.  Washington, D.C.: Anemone P, 1977.

Miller, E. Ethelbert.  Migrant Worker.  Washington, D.C.: Washington Writer’s Publishing House, 1978. 

_____.  Season of Hunger/Cry of Rain.  Detroit, MI:  Lotus P, 1982. 

_____.  Where are the Love Poems for Dictators?  Greensboro, NC: Open Hand, 1986, 2001. 

In Search of Color Everywhere.  Ed. E. Ethelbert Miller. New York: Stewart, Tabori and Chang, 1994.

Miller, E. Ethelbert. First Light.  Baltimore, MD:  Black Classic P, 1994.

_____. Whispers, Secrets and Promises. Baltimore: MD: Black Classic P, 1998.

_____. Fathering Words: The Making of An African American Writer.  New York: St. Martin’s,   2000.

_____. Buddha Weeping in Winter.  Red Wing, MN: Red Dragonfly P, 2001.

Beyond The Frontier: African-American Poetry for the 21st Century. Ed. E. Ethelbert Miller.

           Baltimore, MD: Black Classic P, 2002.

Miller, E. Ethelbert. How We Sleep on the Nights We Don’t Make Love . Willimantic, CT: Curbstone P,

            2004.

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For more E. Ethelbert Miller information, check the following sites:

http://www.eethelbertmiller.com  http://www.wdchumanities.org/programs_library.htm

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update 2 August 2008

 

 

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