Education
Cathleen Miller is an internationally best-selling American nonfiction writer based in California. Her 2013 book, Champion of Choice, is the biography of United Nations leader Nafis Sadik. She is also the author of Desert Flower (1998), co-written with Waris Dirie—a Somali nomad turned model turned activist—who shared her experience with female genital mutilation to bring about global awareness. The book has been cited by the United Nations as having played a major role in the advocacy against female genital mutilation. Desert Flower was made into a feature film in 2009 and released in 34 countries. The print version sold over 11 million copies worldwide and has been translated into more than 55 languages. Miller was born in the United States but has traveled widely in pursuit of research, adventure, and experience. She has interviewed diplomats and heads of state on five continents, patients in an Addis Ababa Hospital, rape camp survivors in Kosovo, and midwives in the mountains of East Timor. Her work sometimes places her in strange circumstances, for example cruising St. Petersburg in a Winnebago to interview prostitutes, and running down a Brazilian mountain at midnight fleeing bandits. Miller earned her MFA in Creative Writing from Pennsylvania State University in 1997 and has been teaching Creative Writing at San José State University since 2004 and is the current Editor-in-chief of Reed Magazine. Miller co-founded Wild Writing Women, a group of women writers who travel worldwide and come together to write their stories of adventure. She is also a member of the Bay Area Travel Writers organization. Her work has appeared in many magazines and newspapers in the United States, including the San Francisco Chronicle, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, and Los Angeles Times. Interview by Joanna Jackson and Andre Jaquez at San José State University.