Dr. Tiya Miles

Tiya Miles, member of the Facing History & Ourselves Board of Scholars, is the Michael Garvey Professor of History, Radcliffe Alumnae Professor, and director of the Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History at Harvard University. She was a member of the faculty at the University of Michigan for sixteen years. A writer of history as well as fiction, Miles is also a public historian who has engaged in several collaborations with historic site and museum professionals and with community members. Miles is a recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship (“Genius Award”) and the Hiett Prize in the Humanities, as well as fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Mellon Foundation. 

Her latest book, All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley’s Sack, a Black Family Keepsake, was a New York Times bestseller that won the 2021 National Book Award for Nonfiction, the PEN America John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction, the Phi Beta Kappa Ralph Waldo Emerson Prize, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Nonfiction, and additional prizes from the American Historical Association and the Organization of American Historians. All That She Carried was named A Best Book of the Year by The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, The Atlanta-Journal Constitution, NPR, Publisher’s Weekly, The Atlantic, Time, and more. 

Miles is also the author of several other acclaimed and prize-winning books, including The Dawn of Detroit, Ties That Bind, The House on Diamond Hill, The Cherokee Rose, and Tales from the Haunted South. She writes essays about race, culture, history and the environment for The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Atlantic, and other publications. She is originally from Ohio, lives in Massachusetts, has roots in the South, married a Montanan, and will always proudly identify as a Midwesterner.