Walter James Miller (1918–2010) was an American literary critic, playwright, poet, professor, and translator. He worked on more than sixty books in his lifetime, including four landmark annotated translations of novels by Jules Verne. He taught at Hofstra University, Polytechnic Institute of New York University, Colorado State University, and for over forty years at New York University. During his time at NYU, he created and taught a popular “Great Books” course and received the NYU Alumni Great Teacher Award in 1980. For fifteen years in the 1960s and 1970s, his Peabody Award–winning show Reader’s Almanac was a fixture on the New York public radio station WNYC. For his radio show, he interviewed many established and rising authors and poets, including Nadine Gordimer, Alan Ginsberg, and Kurt Vonnegut Jr. His verse drama Joseph in the Pit was produced off-Broadway in 1993 and 2002. |
