Tom Miller

I was born in Dothan, Alabama, on November 26, 1945, and raised in nearby Ashford. Ashford is in the heart of what was then still cotton country, and I picked more than my share of cotton while growing up. I earned undergraduate and graduate degrees from the University of Alabama, served as an officer in the U.S. Army (including a tour in Vietnam), worked for two years at the Birmingham Public Library (in the Tutwiler Collection of Southern History), and taught history for three years at St. Ambrose University in Davenport, Iowa, and twenty years at Scott Community College in Bettendorf, Iowa. I have published six juvenile novels: All-Star Showdown (Mid-Prairie Books, 1995), Fourth and Long (Mid-Prairie Books, 1997), Full Court Press (Mid-Prairie Books, 2000), Freshman Sensation (IDEA, Inc., 2007), Twilight Run (IDEA, Inc. 2010), and Ghost Run (IDEA, Inc., 2012). I was a member of the board of the Children’s Literature Festival for fifteen years. As a historian, I have written articles, essays, and reviews for a host of journals, magazines, newspapers, and books over the years. I served as a long-time (15+ years) regular reviewer for Publishers’ Weekly, and following retirement from teaching, I worked as Entertainment Editor for military.com for five years, contributing weekly book and movie reviews and a monthly column. I also served for one year as a contributing columnist for the local Rock Island Argus/Moline Dispatch newspapers. I have been married to Connie Shaw, a retired dentist, for forty-two years, and we have a son, David and two grandsons, Dylan and Ryan. My debut novel for adults, "A Place to Rest," is set in Alabama in the immediate post-World War II era. It was published by Legacy Book Press LLC in February 2022.