Works from On: The New Art of the Essay

These intense visual essays request that the reader slow down and embrace the physicality of reading, as opposed to gliding over the predictability of an automaton text tattooing a screen. The on-going effort constitutes an opportunity to experiment with many types of expressive tactile materials and the depth of a blank page—the page as a net fit to capture the infinite complexities of American experience. 

Ben Miller, On the Enemy Within (96), 2025. Mixed-media collage on 90 lb. index paper (Ink, pastel, Olivetti typed text, wire, origami paper, NYC municipal Cine envelope scrap, ticket clip, tag string…)

Ben Miller’s latest book—The Parade (April Gloaming Publishing)—earned the Moon Meridian Novella Prize. He is also the author of Pandemonium Logs (Rutgers University Press)—recipient of the 2025 Balcones Prize for Nonfiction—and River Bend Chronicle (Lookout Books), which was short-listed for the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing. 

Miller’s writing has been anthologized in Best American Essays and Best American Experimental Writing, and appeared in a wide variety of journals, including The Georgia Review, The Southern Review, New England Review, Salmagundi and One Story. 

His other awards include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, and grants from the South Dakota Arts Council and the Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America.