E. Ethelbert Miller was born in the Bronx, New York, in 1950. He attended Howard University and received a BA in African American studies in 1972. A self-described “literary activist,” Miller has served on the board of the Institute for Policy Studies, a progressive multi-issue think tank, and as director of the African American Studies Resource Center at Howard University.

Miller’s collections of poetry include When Your Wife Has Tommy John Surgery and Other Baseball Stories (City Point Press, 2021), If God Invented Baseball (City Point Press, 2018), How We Sleep on the Nights We Don’t Make Love (Curbstone Press, 2004), Whispers, Secrets & Promises (Black Classic Press, 1998), Where Are the Love Poems for Dictators? (Open Hand Publishing, 1986), Season of Hunger / Cry of Rain (Lotus Press, 1982), Andromeda (Chiva Publications, 1974), and The Land of Smiles and the Land of No Smiles (1974). In 2016, Miller’s work was compiled by Kirsten Porter in The Collected Poems of E. Ethelbert Miller for the Willow Books imprint of Aquarius Press.

Miller is the editor of the anthologies Beyond the Frontier: African American Poetry for the 21st Century (Black Classic Press, 2002), In Search of Color Everywhere: A Collection of African American Poetry with Terrance Cummings (Stewart, Tabori, & Chang, 1994) which won the PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award and was a Book of the Month Club selection, and Women Surviving Massacres and Men (Anemone Press, 1977). He is the author of the memoirs The 5th Inning (Busboy and Poets Press, 2009) and Fathering Words: The Making of an African American Writer (Black Classic Press, 2000). He also serves as Associate Editor for The American Book Review.

Miller has held positions as scholar-in-residence at George Mason University and as the Jessie Ball DuPont Scholar at Emory & Henry College.

He received a Columbia Merit Award in 1993, was made an honorary citizen of Baltimore by the mayor in 1994, and was honored by First Lady Laura Bush at the White House in 2003. He was given a 2020 congressional award from Congressman Jamie Raskin in recognition of his literary activism and was named a 2023 Grammy Nominee Finalist for Best Spoken Word Poetry Album. In 2024, he was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award by Furious Flower.