I really, really dislike writing bios. On the rare occasions when I do get an acceptance, I can spend a week agonizing over writing a three-line bio. It’s ridiculous.

This is the obligatory “About” page, which means I should mention that I was born in Chicago (sort of) and live in Boston (almost), that I spent part of my childhood in Australia, that I’m married-but-separated and have a seventeen-year-old daughter, that I’m in love with a rock star, that I do computery-type stuff for a paycheck, that I can bake vegan desserts that would knock you flat on your hinder, that I like contact juggling and occasionally drag out the skateboard despite the protests of my forty-eight-year-old knees, that I wield an electric guitar like a blunt instrument and hang around with too many musicians, that I love exotic fruits and bad TV (preferably together), that I was an honest-to-goodness Girl Scout and a connoisseur of terrible horror movies, that I keep odd hours and live on hot sauce and have loved magic all my life and my diagonal palm shift is coming up to snuff.

Instead of doing that, here’s a bunch of bios I’ve used in the past, in a semi-chronological order of older to newer:
  • Jack Miller resides in Arlington, Massachusetts with his wife, his daughter, and a hatful of obstinate ghosts.
  • Jack Miller writes in Arlington, Massachusetts, where he’s too close to Boston to see many stars at night, but there’s a forest across the street with bright red mushrooms which may even be poisonous.
  • Jack Miller grew up in Illinois, Australia, and Illinois again. Toward the end of his college years, a short cycle of poems he’d written was awarded the second place Robert A. Boit Writing Prize; he spent the prize money on his first tattoo.
  • Jack Miller asked his four-year-old daughter Anya, whom he has raised full-time since her birth, what one thing people should know about him; she replied, “that you’re very tired.”
  • Jack Miller, a native Chicagoan, spent two years of his childhood in Australia while his father taught political science at the University of Melbourne. He’s been back in the U.S. for a quarter-century, but still has fond memories of Big M milks, watching Shirl’s Neighbourhood, and eating Jaffas in the dark at the cinema on Russell Street.
  • Jack Miller once counted how many licks it takes to get the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop.
  • Jack Miller lives six miles northwest of the Grolier Poetry Book Shop with his long-suffering wife and a grinning force of chaos and entropy claiming to be his offspring.
  • Jack Miller: “A few weeks ago I came across a receipt from the Grolier Poetry Bookshop in Harvard Square. It was dated over two years ago, when Louisa Solano still ran the place. There’s a ‘Miscellaneous Discount’ on the receipt; by looking at it, no one would know that Louisa gave me 20% off ‘because politeness is so rare to see these days.’”
  • Jack Miller lives and writes in Arlington, Massachusetts, where his favorite new pastime is arguing with liquor store clerks who card him when he buys nonalcoholic beer.
  • When not writing poetry or fiction, Jack Miller fiddles with ones and zeroes, bakes vegan desserts, and wrangles ornery kindergarteners just outside of Boston. He loves that lenses derive their name from the word ‘lentil’ (because of their shape) and not the other way around.
  • Jack Miller is a waiter, and only writes poetry to pay the bills.  He currently waits tables at Nothin’ But Noodles in Arlington, Massachusetts, a dream career he has subsidized by publishing poems in several American journals, including RHINO, Conclave, and Packingtown Review. Please don’t judge him.
  • Jack Miller once deconstructed every cookie in a package of Oreos and put all the cream filling between two end pieces to form one monstrous Mega-Oreo. This turned out to be a simultaneously brilliant and terrible idea.
  • Jack Miller lives and writes in Arlington, MA, where he works as a sibylline telepath. Months ago he predicted that right at this precise instant you would be thinking of a turtle wearing a tiny sombrero. And now you are. Your bill is in the mail.
  • Jack Miller lives and writes near Boston, where he sword-fights with his daughter and dates a rock star. Though he is uncertain what an MFA is and is pretty sure “academia” is a kind of tropical nut, his poetry has appeared in several print journals, including Sugar House Review, RHINO, and Conclave: A Journal of Character. Recently he won the second place Vallum Award for Poetry, nearly two decades after winning the second place Robert Boit Manuscript Prize. This is the first time he’s ever taken first place for anything, so he may consequently spend the prize money on a tiara. If he does, photos will surface at jack-miller.org.