In Memoriam: Heather Ross Miller, Thomas H. Broadus Jr. Professor of English Emerita The famed author worked for Washington and Lee University for 11 years.
Heather Ross Miller, Thomas H. Broadus Jr. Professor of English Emerita at Washington and Lee University, died on July 9, 2025, in Lexington, Virginia. She was 85.
She was born on Sept. 15, 1939, in Badin, North Carolina, to Fred Elbert Ross Jr. and Geneva Smith Ross. Miller’s propensity for the written word started early as her family, famously known as the “Writing Rosses,” immersed her in storytelling. Though her grandparents, Fred Elbert Ross and Jennie Lilly Ross, weren’t writers themselves, their rich oral traditions influenced their children and the generations to follow. Miller’s father was a novelist, short story writer, editor and photographer; her aunt, Eleanor Ross Taylor, was a poet alongside her husband, Peter Taylor, a novelist and short story writer; her other aunt, Jean Ross Justice, also wrote short stories, with her husband, Donald Justice, a poet.
Miller earned her bachelor’s degree in English from the Woman’s College of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro in 1961, where she graduated magna cum laude and was a member of Phi Beta Kappa. That same year, she received the Woodrow Wilson Fellowship.
She published her first novel at age 25, “The Edge of the Woods” (1964), which won the National Association of Independent Schools Award. Her second novel, “Tenants of the House” (1966), won a Sir Walter Raleigh Award for fiction, and her poetry book, “The Wind Southerly” (1967), won the Oscar Arnold Young Cup for poetry. She received a creative writing fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1967 and published her third novel, “Gone A Hundred Miles,” all before receiving her Master of Fine Arts from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro in 1969.
She started teaching English at Southeastern Community College in Whiteville, North Carolina, where she served as head of the department. In 1974, she taught English and communications at Stanly Technical College (now Stanly Community College) in Albemarle, North Carolina, before becoming an associate professor of English and head of the department of speech and writing at Pfeiffer College (now Pfeiffer University) (1977-1983). She then became professor of English at University of Arkansas (1983-1992), serving as director of the MFA program in creative writing from 1984-1986. All the while, she continued writing herself, publishing three collections of poems and two collections of short stories. She received two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and was nominated for Pushcart Prizes in both poetry and fiction. She earned the Alumni Achievement Award from UNC-Greensboro in 1976 and won the North Carolina Award for Literature in 1983.
In 1992, she joined the W&L faculty in the English Department, where she taught creative writing. She was a consultant to various state art councils and literary agencies and served as advisory editor for the Shenandoah literary magazine. Miller was named to the distinguished stories list in “Best American Stories” in 1993, and she published a book of poems, “Friends & Assassins” (1993), and a book of short stories, “In the Funny Papers” (1995).
She became the Thomas H. Broadus Jr. Professor of English in 1999 and, that same year, published a collection of poems, “Days of Love and Murder,” and her fourth novel, “Champeen,” which was nominated for a Virginia Literary Award. She wrote her first memoir in 2000, with “Crusoe’s Island: A Story of a Writer and a Place,” chronicling her experiences living in North Carolina’s remote Singletary Lake State Park for 13 years with her late husband, Clyde Miller, and their two children. She retired from W&L in 2003 after 11 years.
She continued writing in retirement, creating works such as “Creative Writing Murders” (2007) and “Women Disturbing the Peace” (2018).
She is survived by her daughter, Melissa Miller, of North Carolina, her son, Kirk Miller (Tina), and her grandsons, Alexander and Finnegan Miller, of Rockbridge County, Virginia. She was preceded in death by her husband, Clyde Miller.
Miller’s full obituary was published in The News-Gazette.
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