Tiya Miles

Tiya Miles is the author of seven books, including the prize-winning histories All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley’s Sack, a Black Family Keepsake (Random House, 2021), The Dawn of Detroit: A Chronicle of Slavery and Freedom in the City of the Straits (New Press, 2017), and The House on Diamond Hill: A Cherokee Plantation Story (University of North Carolina Press, 2010). All That She Carried was a New York Times bestseller recognized with 11 historical and literary prizes, including the Cundill History Prize, the Frederick Douglass Book Prize, and the National Book Award.

Miles has published historical fiction, a lecture series on haunted plantations, a coedited collection on Afro-Native studies, and various essays in the Atlantic, the Boston Globe, the New York Times, and more. Her forthcoming book, Wild Girls: How the Outdoors Shaped the Women Who Challenged a Nation (W. W. Norton, 2023), was written during a previous Radcliffe fellowship.

Miles has consulted with colleagues at historic sites and museums on representations of slavery, African American material culture, and the Black-Native past, including, most recently, the Fabric of a Nation quilt exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston. Her work has been supported by the MacArthur Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. A Radcliffe Alumnae Professor at Harvard Radcliffe Institute and the Michael Garvey Professor of History in the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences, she earned her PhD in American studies from the University of Minnesota.

For Tiya Miles, Girlhood Reading Was "My Escape and Joy" (New York Times, 10/12/23)

Reinspired by True Events (Harvard Gazette, 7/10/23)