Mississippi Native: Mary Miller

"As a child I remember wondering why I was born in Mississippi. I would think of all the places I might have been born and wonder why this place. But why not this place?"

What does it mean to call Mississippi home? Why do people choose to leave or live in this weird, wonderful, and sometimes infuriating place? Today we hear from author Mary Miller who grew up in Jackson and now enjoys being part of a creative community in Oxford, Mississippi.

Featured contributor Mary Miller. Photo by Lucky Tucker.

Where are you from?

Jackson, MS. Now living in Oxford.

Why did you leave Mississippi? Where did you go?

I’ve left Mississippi twice, for fewer than five years total. In 2007, I moved from Meridian to Nashville and worked at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in the Green Hills Mall. Things were not great there ($8 an hour is never great), but I was writing and having some small successes by that point. I returned to Mississippi for graduate school at the Center for Writers at Southern Mississippi—studying with Frederick and Steven Barthelme was a dream—but I wasn’t cut out for the rigors of a PhD program, so I “transferred” to the Michener Center for Writers at the Universit…