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Image courtesy of publisher's website. Photo credit: John Tsiavis
Alex Miller Alex Miller i(A12971 works by) (a.k.a. Alexander McPhee Miller)
Born: Established: 1936 London,
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England,
c
c
United Kingdom (UK),
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Western Europe, Europe,
;
Gender: Male
Arrived in Australia: 1952
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BiographyHistory

As a child Alexander McPhee Miller lived in south London, the son of an Irish mother and a Scottish father, whose background he has described as 'culturally rich'. Before migrating alone to Australia when he was seventeen years old he worked on a farm in the west of England. Then, after working as itinerant stockman on cattle stations in Central Queensland and the Gulf Country and travelling around Australia, he studied History and English at the University of Melbourne, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in 1965. Miller completed a Diploma of Education at the Melbourne State College in 1975, and he began teaching a writing course at Brunswick Technical School the following year. He had started writing poetry when he was twenty-two. He has also worked as an art dealer, farmer and public servant.

Miller was the inaugural writer-in-residence at the Australian Nouveau Theatre, 1981, co-founder of the Anthill Theatre and a founding member of the Melbourne Writers' Theatre, 1982. He has taught the prose writing course at Holmesglen College of TAFE, Victoria, since 1986, and was Visiting Fellow at La Trobe University 1994 -1995. Miller writes full-time and lives in the Victorian country town of Castlemaine.

When asked to name influential writers on his own work, Miller replied: 'Wilde, Tournier, White. George Eliot and Proust. These are all on my shelves, along with Duras and Beckett and Artaud and Celine and so on and on. And that astonishing biography, A Life, by David Marr. All books that are better at second reading. And not all books are... But where's the influence?... I could say more confidently who hasn't influenced me than who has. Joyce and the great American writers of the twentieth century. But then I like the intimate, the lyrical, the detailed, the confiding moment; the hard-won simplicities of a modest prose, deceptive and clear and smooth, rather than the fireworks displays, the crackling blaze of glory where nothing is what it is but is forever akin to something else.'

Source of quotation: http://www.allenandunwin.com
Sighted: 06/02/2007

Exhibitions

Most Referenced Works

Awards for Works

y separately published work icon A Kind of Confession : The Writer's Private World Crows Nest : Allen and Unwin , 2023 26831465 2023 single work autobiography 'A deeply personal, behind-the-scenes exploration of Alex Miller's six-decade writing life. A Kind of Confession is a secret look into Alex Miller's writing life, spanning sixty years of creativity and inspiration. As a young man in 1961 Miller left his work as a ringer in Queensland and set out to achieve his dream of becoming a serious novelist. It was not until 1988 that his first novel, Watching the Climbers on the Mountain, was published. Twelve more novels would follow, all bestsellers, many published internationally. This selection from his notebooks and letters makes it exhilaratingly evident that Miller has been devoted to finding and telling stories that are profound, substantial and entertaining, stories that capture both intellect and emotion. Miller's fascinating life is told in a personal, behind-the-scenes exploration of his struggle to become a published writer, his determination, his methods of creative thought and the sources of his inspiration. His writing, sometimes in anger and despair, sometimes with humour and joy, whether created for publication or for private meditation, is alive with ideas, moral choices, commentary, encouragement, criticism and love.' (Publication summary)
2024 shortlisted Prime Minister's Literary Awards Non-Fiction
y separately published work icon A Brief Affair Crows Nest : Allen and Unwin , 2022 24974093 2022 single work novel 'From the bustling streets of China, to the ominous Cell 16 in an old asylum building, to the familiar sounds and sight of galahs flying over a Victorian farm, A Brief Affair is a tender love story. On the face of it, Dr Frances Egan is a woman who has it all-a loving family and a fine career until a brief, perfect affair reveals to her an imaginative dimension to her life that is wholly her own. Fran finds the courage and the inspiration to risk everything and change her direction at the age of forty-two. This newfound understanding of herself is fortified by the discovery of a long-forgotten diary from the asylum and the story it reveals. Written with humour, sensitivity and the wisdom for which Miller's work is famous, this exquisitely compassionate novel explores the interior life and the dangerous navigation of love in all its forms.' (Publication summary)
2023 longlisted APA Book Design Awards Best Designed Commercial Fiction Cover designed by Sandy Cull.
y separately published work icon Max Crows Nest : Allen and Unwin , 2020 19845096 2020 single work biography

'I began to see that whatever I might write about Max, discover about him, piece together with those old shards of memory, it would be his influence on the friendships of the living that would frame his story in the present.

'According to your 1939 Gestapo file, you adopted the cover names Landau and Maxim. The name your mother and father gave you was Moses. We knew you as Max. You had worked in secret. From an early age you concealed yourself - like the grey box beetle in the final country of your exile, maturing on its journey out of sight beneath the bark of the tree.

'You risked death every day. And when at last the struggle became hopeless, you escaped the hell and found a haven in China first, and then Australia, where you became one of those refugees who, in their final place of exile, chose not death but silence and obscurity.

'Alex Miller followed the faint trail of Max Blatt's early life for five years. Max's story unfolded, slowly at first, from the Melbourne Holocaust Centre's records then to Berlin's Federal Archives. From Berlin, Miller travelled to Max's old home town of Wroclaw in Poland. And finally in Israel with Max's niece, Liat Shoham, and her brother Yossi Blatt, at Liat's home in the moshav Shadmot Dvora in the Lower Galilee, the circle of friendship was closed and the mystery of Max's legendary silence was unmasked.

'Max is an astonishing and moving tribute to friendship, a meditation on memory itself, and a reminder to the reader that history belongs to humanity.' (Publication summary)

2021 shortlisted National Biography Award

Known archival holdings

University of New South Wales Australian Defence Force Academy Australian Defence Force Academy Library (ACT)
Last amended 30 Aug 2017 10:13:34
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