Tom Miller is an American writer and essayist known for observant, wide-ranging books about borderlands, forgotten towns, offshore places, and the human stories hiding in plain sight. He drifted to several islands and out west when he was young, worked a string of low-paying jobs, and gradually built a career writing reported pieces, travel narratives, and long-form essays for both major magazines and smaller literary outlets. Over time he became associated with small desert towns, small island destinations, and remote uneasy small towns in Canada. He talks about uneasy landscapes, informal economies, old grudges, regional music, language, and the strange social rituals of places that sit just outside the mainstream. Friends describe him as curious, dryly funny, and mildly suspicious of institutions. He has edited collaborative projects, collected odd regional records and printed ephemera. Some say he does his best work in motel courtyards, public libraries, even once hiding for a full month in the back room of a shuttered hat shop.
