Miles Fuller

Miles investigated how human beings exceed the limitations of the body to reach a state of chronic pain, and the limits of language in describing that pain.

PhD awarded 2022

Miles Fuller is an essayist whose work has appeared in Guernica, Bellingham Review, Quarterly West, Hayden's Ferry, Alligator Juniper and others. His work has received accolades in the U.S. from the Academy of American Poets, AWP, Pushcart, and Best American Essays.

He holds a BA in English from Westminster College, an MFA in Nonfiction Writing from the University of Iowa, and then earned an MBA just find out what he’d been missing.

Aside from teaching writing courses to bemused undergraduates at several institutions, Miles has served as an editor at Ellipsis Magazine and the University of Utah Press, and is on the Board of Directors for Sarabande Books. Although originally from Salt Lake City, Utah, he has roamed for teaching or educational opportunities ever since, until finally picking the best possible place: right here at Victoria's IIML in Wellington.

Miles writes: 'For the synthesis of my creative and critical thesis, I researched and wrote about how human beings exceed the limitations of the body—through sport, work, accidents, or illness—en route to a life of chronic pain, and how limited our languages remain in describing those sensations of pain.

'I was interested in locating liminal spaces in my writing: those places where bodies and minds become marginalized, between common understandings, due to illness or trauma or ambition. My work has previously investigated mental illness, religion, and atypical family configurations, often conjoined with my compulsion toward the data-rich sciences as a way to elucidate the arts, our emotions, and relationships.'