Alex Miller (writer)

Alexander McPhee Miller (born 27 December 1936) is an Australian novelist. Miller is twice winner of the Miles Franklin Award, in 1993 for "The Ancestor Game" and in 2003 for "Journey to the Stone Country". He won the overall award for the Commonwealth Writer's Prize for "The Ancestor Game" in 1993. He is twice winner of the New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards Christina Stead Prize for "Conditions of Faith" in 2001 and for "Lovesong" in 2011. In recognition of his impressive body of work and in particular for his novel "Autumn Laing" he was awarded the Melbourne Prize for Literature in 2012.
Life.
Alex Miller was born in London to a Scottish father and Irish mother. After working as a farm labourer in Somerset he migrated alone to Australia at the age of 16. He worked as a ringer in Queensland and as a horse breaker in New Zealand before studying at night school to gain university entrance. Miller graduated from the University of Melbourne in English and History in 1965. In 1975 he published his first short story, 'Comrade Pawel' in "Meanjin Quarterly". In 1980 he was a co-founder of the Anthill Theatre and a founding member of the Melbourne Writers' Theatre. Miller taught writing courses at Holmesglen TAFE and La Trobe University between 1986 and 1997. Miller has written full-time since 1998. In this time he has written nine of his thirteen published novels and his non-fiction, "Max". His work has received wide critical acclaim.
Alex Miller lives in country Victoria with his wife Stephanie. "The Ancestor Game" was re-published by Allen & Unwin in 2016 as a celebratory edition to mark 25 years since its publication and to honour the author on his 80th birthday.
Writing.
Miller's first novel, "Watching the Climbers on the Mountain", was published in 1988 and republished by Allen & Unwin in 2012. Major national and international recognition came with the publication of "The Ancestor Game", his third novel and the winner of both the Miles Franklin Award and overall winner of the Commonwealth Writers' Prize in 1993. Since then Miller has published on average a major novel every two years, his tenth being "Autumn Laing" published in 2011. The Melbourne critic Peter Craven, writing in "The Australian" on 14 July 2012, describes "Autumn Laing" as "superb" and says of it, "it is the novel that is liable to burn brightest in the whole of his oeuvre." Professor Brenda Walker suggests that 'Alex Miller may be Australia's greatest living writer'.
Robert Dixon, Professor of Australian Literature at Sydney University writes that Miller's 'novels are by and large accessible to the general reading public yet manifestly of high literary seriousness - substantial, technically masterly and assured, intricately interconnected, and of great imaginative, intellectual and ethical weight'. "The Novels of Alex Miller", edited and with an introduction by Robert Dixon was published in 2012 following a two-day Symposium at the University of Sydney in 2011 as a major critical study devoted to Miller’s works. In 2014 Robert Dixon published the first sole-authored critical survey of the respected author's eleven novels. Robert Dixon's "Alex Miller: the ruin of time" is the first of the Sydney Studies in Australian Literature series 
Miller's novel "Autumn Laing" was inspired by his lifelong interest in art and is loosely based on the relationship between Sidney Nolan and Sunday Reed.
"Coal Creek", published in 2013 by Allen & Unwin won the 2014 Victorian Premier's Literary Award.
In 2015 Alex Miller published a collection of short stories and essays drawn from forty years of writing, "The Simplest Words A Storyteller's Journey". Peter Pierce describes this collection as 'a rich, generous compilation that enticingly refracts our perceptions of one of Australia's finest novelists'.
"The Passage of Love", published by Allen & Unwin in 2017, is Alex Miller's most recent novel. . Michael Cathcart, when interviewing Alex Miller on ABC Radio, described "The Passage of Love" as 'The most candid, sharing, generous book I've read in a long, long time.'
"Max" is a work of non-fiction which tells of Alex Miller's friendship with his mentor, Max Blatt, and his search to understand Max's life. The book was published by Allen & Unwin in 2020. Writing in The Age/Sydney Morning Herald, Michael McGirr says ' "Max" is haunted by devastating insights. Blatt told Miller that the hardest part of torture was the realisation that the torturer was also your brother. It is the same generosity that makes Max such a compelling argument against narrowness and division. Blatt’s life has deep and wide ramifications. Miller’s intelligent love has created a tale for the ages.' 
Awards.
Miller is a recipient of the Centenary Medal, and in 2008 the Manning Clark Medal for "An outstanding contribution to Australian cultural life." Miller is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities.