Tom Miller (born August 11, 1947 in Washington, D.C., died December 19, 2022 in Tucson, Arizona) was an American author primarily known for travel literature. His ten books include The Panama Hat Trail, On the Border, Trading with the Enemy, and Jack Ruby's Kitchen Sink (later rereleased as Revenge of the Saguaro). He has written articles for the New York Times , Washington Post , The New Yorker , The Smithsonian , Natural History , Rolling Stone , Life , Crawdaddy and many other magazines. [1]
Miller's childhood was full of reading. [2] The family read three newspapers daily, and the bookshelves of his home were always full. His earliest travels were to Camp Catawba, a summer boys' camp in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. He wrote for his high school newspaper, and by his fifth and final semester of college, was editor-in-chief of the school's weekly paper. But this was the late 1960s, and the underground, anti-war press had for him a cultural and political appeal the college presses lacked. He continued through the early 1970s editing and writing underground pamphlets, papers, and flyers. [1]
In 1969 he moved to Tucson, Arizona. He tried working odd jobs—selling encyclopedias door-to-door and working as a janitor, both jobs lasting four weeks—but focused on living cheaply and writing for whatever money he could earn. In the late sixties and early 1970s Miller continued to write for underground and alternative periodicals such as The Rag in Austin, the Washington Free Press, Dallas Notes, Dallas Iconoclast, the Albuquerque Current, Liberation News Service, the Liberated Guardian, and many other outlets. He soon wrote for "sea level" publications, as his colleague Andrew Kopkind called them – Fusion, Creem, Rolling Stone, and the like. [3] His first break would come after writing a short piece for SunDance magazine that an editor at Esquire happened to read. He had been paid $15 to write the article; the editor suggested his magazine would have paid $750 for the same work. Soon he would find his first mainstream work with them.
In 1971 the Internal Security Division of the U.S. Justice Department probing the anti-Vietnam war protests, subpoenaed Miller to testify before a grand jury. He refused to enter the grand jury room, claiming First Amendment rights that as a journalist, even free-lance for the underground press, to testify in secret would place a cloak of suspicion over him and affect his ability to gather news. Many journalists wrote affidavits on his behalf. US District Court Judge William Frey ruled on Miller's behalf, [4] stating that Miller "appears to be a member of the group about which he reports rather than an objective reporter. He occupies a dual capacity. However…" The Justice Department appealed the decision and refused to state its reason for subpoenaing Miller. Eventually the grand jury expired and the case ended with Miller free and clear of its purpose.
An offbeat 1975 article Miller wrote for Crawdaddy about the Kennedy Assassination was read by a literary agent who insisted it could be expanded into a full-length book. [1] This became The Assassination Please Almanac, his first book, whose cover blurb called it "a consumer's guide to conspiracy theories."
Life on the southern U.S. border inspired his first travel book: On the Border: Portraits of America's Southwestern Frontier. He travelled the full 2,000 mile length of the United States–Mexico border interviewing its denizens. The book was published in 1981. For approximately six years (1979-1985) Miller worked as a stringer for the National Desk of the New York Times, filing stories on conflict and culture in the Southwest borderlands.
His 1986 travelogue, The Panama Hat Trail follows the making and marketing of a (misnomered) Panama hat from the straw fields of Ecuador and its weaving by Indian peasants, to its finishing in a North American hat factory, and finally to a customer in a San Diego retail hat shop.
His book Jack Ruby's Kitchen Sink: Offbeat Portraits of America's Southwest, won the 2000 Lowell Thomas Award for "Best Travel Book of the Year," given by the Society of American Travel Writers Foundation (The book was later retitled Revenge of the Saguaro).
In 1987 he first visited Cuba and moved to that Caribbean Island for eight months in the summer of 1990. In 1992 his experiences there became the book, Trading With the Enemy: A Yankee Travels Through Castro's Cuba. He wrote many articles about Cuba for a wide range of publications. As co-founder and co-director of Writers of the Americas (2000-2002) Miller arranged for approximately 15 American writers to mix with a like number of Cuban writers in Havana in somewhat of a literary détente. In 2008 he began leading annual one-week Literary Havana tours, introducing Americans to Cuba's literary personalities and activities. [5]
Miller conceived and edited the book How I Learned English: 55 Accomplished Latinos Recall Lessons in Language and Life, published simultaneously in Spanish in 2007.
He has also edited anthologies about Cuba and the Mexican border and was a major contributor to the 4-volume Encyclopedia Latina. His collection of over 80 versions of La Bamba led to his Rhino Records compilation The Best of La Bamba. [6]
The University of Arizona Library acquired Miller's archives and in 2004 mounted a major exhibit of his papers. [7] He has served as adjunct research associate at the University of Arizona's Latin American Area Center since 1990, [8] and resides in Tucson with his wife, Regla Albarrán. In 2008 the City of Quito, at a public ceremony in its Centro Historico, proclaimed Miller "Un Huésped Ilustre" (An Illustrious Guest) for his literary contributions to Ecuador. Miller is a member of the Thornton Wilder Society and the Cervantes Society of America, as well as The Authors Guild. One of Miller's siblings is Charles A. Miller (1937), Professor Emeritus of Politics and American Studies, Lake Forest College.
In 2015 he was a guest travel writing workshop leader at the Port Townsend (Washington) Writers Conference.
In 2016, the Cultural Ministry of Mexico selected Revenge of the Saguaro: Portraits of America's Southwestern Frontier to be translated into Spanish by the Trilce Publishing Company.
In addition to leading land-based study tours of Cuba, in 2017 Miller was the on-board lecturer on the Sea Mist, a 200 passenger cruise ship that circumnavigated the island, stopping at various port cities during the ten day journey.
In the fall of 2017 a Festschrift (literary tribute) was published in Miller's honor, with essays about his work and writing style.
Miller was the focus of a panel entitled "Tom Miller, Hot and Cold" at the 2018 Tucson Festival of Books.
"Great travel writing consists of equal parts curiosity, vulnerability and vocabulary. It is not a terrain for know-it-alls or the indecisive. The best of the genre can simply be an elegant natural history essay, a nicely writ sports piece, or a well-turned profile of a bar band and its music. A well-grounded sense of place is the challenge for the writer. We observe, we calculate, we inquire, we look for a link between what we already know and what we're about to learn. The finest travel writing describes what's going on when nobody's looking." [9]
"No camera, no recording device, no laptop, none of this palm pilot nonsense or a cell phone. Paper and pencil, a book, maybe a bilingual dictionary. Anything beyond that (a) can be stolen, and (b) intimidates people you encounter. The more double-A batteries you carry, the more you distance yourself from the people you're writing about." [1]
U.S. Route 89 is a north–south United States Numbered Highway with two sections, and one former section. The southern section runs for 848 miles (1,365 km) from Flagstaff, Arizona, to the southern entrance of Yellowstone National Park. The northern section runs for 404 miles (650 km) from the northern entrance of Yellowstone National Park in Montana, ending at the Canadian border. Unnumbered roads through Yellowstone connect the two sections. Before 1992, US 89 was a Canada–Mexico, border-to-border highway that ended at Nogales, Arizona, on its southern end.
A chimichanga is a deep-fried burrito that is common in Tex-Mex and other Southwestern U.S. cuisine. The dish is typically prepared by filling a flour tortilla with various ingredients, most commonly rice, cheese, beans, and a meat such as machaca, carne adobada, carne seca, or shredded chicken, and folding it into a rectangular package. It is then deep-fried, and can be accompanied by salsa, guacamole, or sour cream.
Frank Harris Hitchcock, was chairman of Republican National Committee from 1908 to 1909. He was then Postmaster General of the United States under President William Howard Taft from 1909 to 1913.
Ted Conover is an American author and journalist who has been called a "master of immersion" and "master of experience-based narrative nonfiction." A graduate of Amherst College and a former Marshall Scholar, he is also a professor and past director of the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute of New York University. He teaches graduate courses in the New York University Literary Reportage concentration, as well as undergraduate courses on the "journalism of empathy" and undercover reporting.
Luis Miguel Valdez is an American playwright, screenwriter, film director and actor. Regarded as the father of Chicano film and playwriting, Valdez is best known for his play Zoot Suit, his movie La Bamba, and his creation of El Teatro Campesino. A pioneer in the Chicano Movement, Valdez broadened the scope of theatre and arts of the Chicano community.
John Myers Myers was an American writer. He is known best for the fantasy novel Silverlock (1949), in which a man with a Master of Business Administration travels through a fantasy land, meeting dozens of characters from myth, legend, and romance for adventure and instruction.
Oscar Jerome Hijuelos was an American novelist.
Gary Paul Nabhan is an agricultural ecologist, Ethnobotanist, Ecumenical Franciscan Brother, and author whose work has focused primarily on the plants and cultures of the desert Southwest. He is considered a pioneer in the local food movement and the heirloom seed saving movement.
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Juan Felipe Herrera is an American poet, performer, writer, cartoonist, teacher, and activist. Herrera was the 21st United States Poet Laureate from 2015 to 2017. He is a major figure in the literary field of Chicano poetry.
Tom Bissell is an American journalist, critic, and writer, best known for his extensive work as a writer of video games, including The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, Battlefield Hardline, and Gears 5. His work has been adapted into films by Julia Loktev, Werner Herzog and James Franco.
Mexican American literature is literature written by Mexican Americans in the United States. Although its origins can be traced back to the sixteenth century, the bulk of Mexican American literature dates from post-1848 and the United States annexation of large parts of Mexico in the wake of the Mexican–American War. Today, as a part of American literature in general, this genre includes a vibrant and diverse set of narratives, prompting critics to describe it as providing "a new awareness of the historical and cultural independence of both northern and southern American hemispheres". Chicano literature is an aspect of Mexican American literature.
Charles Alexander is an American poet, publisher, and book artist. He is the director and editor-in-chief of Chax Press. Alexander also served as the Director of the Minnesota Center for the Book Arts from 1993 until 1995, and as book artist there through 1996. Alexander lives in Tucson, AZ with his wife the visual artist Cynthia Miller and his two daughters. In 2006 he received the Arizona Arts Award and in 2021 he received the Lord Nose Award for excellence in independent literary publishing.
Christopher P. Baker is a professional travel writer and photographer, adventure motorcyclist, tour leader, and Cuba expert, and the 2008 Lowell Thomas Award 'Travel Journalist of the Year.' He is a contributor to magazines and other publications worldwide, and is the author of travel guidebooks for publishers such as Dorling Kindersley, Lonely Planet, Moon Publications, and National Geographic.
Neil Miller is an American journalist and nonfiction writer, best known for his books on LGBTQ history and culture. His writing career started in 1975 and ranged through at least 2010. Two of his six books won Lambda Literary Awards.
Kenneth J. Lamberton is an American writer and former teacher. Born in Duluth, Minnesota, Lamberton attended the University of Arizona, where he received a Bachelor of Science degree in biology and a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing. He was working as a science teacher in Mesa, Arizona in 1985 when he was awarded a Teacher of the Year award. A few months later, the then 28-year-old Lamberton was arrested for child molestation for having an affair with a 14-year-old student and transporting her across state lines. During his twelve-year prison term at the Santa Rita unit of the Arizona State Prison Complex at Tucson, he participated in a creative writing program run by Richard Shelton and became a writer, penning essays for the prison magazine La Roca. After his release on September 25, 2000, he began to publish non-fiction books and articles on natural history and crime and punishment in the Southwest.
Saguaro National Park is a United States national park in Pima County, southeastern Arizona. The 92,000-acre (37,000 ha) park consists of two separate areas—the Tucson Mountain District (TMD), about 10 miles (16 km) west of Tucson, and the Rincon Mountain District (RMD), about 10 miles (16 km) east of the city. Both districts preserve Sonoran Desert landscapes, fauna, and flora, including the giant saguaro cactus.
The saguaro is a tree-like cactus species in the monotypic genus Carnegiea that can grow to be over 12 meters tall. It is native to the Sonoran Desert in Arizona, the Mexican state of Sonora, and the Whipple Mountains and Imperial County areas of California. The saguaro blossom is the state wildflower of Arizona. Its scientific name is given in honor of Andrew Carnegie. In 1994, Saguaro National Park, near Tucson, Arizona, was designated to help protect this species and its habitat.
Richard Grant is a freelance British travel writer based in Arizona.
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{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)A Sense of Place: Great Travel Writers Talk About Their Craft, Lives, and Inspiration, by Michael Shapiro, pp. 325–343.
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