Alice Miller appointed 2027 IIML Writer in Residence

The poet and novelist will spend 2027 at the International Institute of Modern Letters in Wellington, starting in February.

Poet and novelist Alice Miller has been named the 2027 Writer in Residence at the International Institute of Modern Letters (IIML) at Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington, in an appointment made by the IIML and Creative New Zealand. She will start the residency in February 2027.

Miller plans to use the residency to work on a new novel and a new poetry collection. She is also writing a commissioned libretto for an opera marking 50 years since the Erebus disaster, and is working with her Norwegian partner on a series of contemporary Aotearoa writing translated into Norwegian.

Miller writes poetry, fiction and essays. Her poetry collections are The Limits (2014), Nowhere Nearer (2018) and What Fire (2021). Her first novel, More Miracle Than Bird, came out with Tin House Books in the US in 2020 and was a New York Times Book Review Summer Reading Selection. She has won the Landfall Essay Prize twice, and her latest book, Here & Thereafter, has recently been published in the UK.

A Victoria University graduate in history and English literature, she completed an MA at the IIML in 2005 and an MFA at the Iowa Writers Workshop in 2008. She has worked at the Waitangi Tribunal and the United Nations and has taught writing in the US and Europe. The residency brings her home after 15 years in Europe.

IIML director Damien Wilkins said Miller "has an extraordinary set of literary skills".