Words That Work

Isaac Ginsberg Miller (he/they) is a poet, scholar, and educator based in Chicago. Isaac earned his PhD in Black Studies from Northwestern University, where he was a member of the Poetry and Poetics Graduate Cluster and received a Graduate Certificate in Critical Theory. Isaac recently defended their dissertation, “Building the Circle: Contemporary Black Poetry Collectives and the Question(ing) of Tradition.” For this research, Isaac received an Andrew W. Mellon Dissertation Fellowship from the Black Arts Archive Sawyer Seminar, with additional support from the Buffett Institute for Global Affairs, the Center for African American History, the Department of Black Studies, the Kaplan Public Humanities Graduate Practicum, the NU-SSRC Dissertation Proposal Development Program, and the Program for African Studies. Previously, Isaac completed an MFA in Poetry at NYU, and a BA in Comparative Ethnic Studies and Interdisciplinary Studies (with a minor in Global Poverty and Practice) from UC Berkeley, where they were awarded the Judith Lee Stronach Baccalaureate Prize. Additionally, Isaac has received fellowships from the Blue Mountain Center, the Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop, the Coler-Goldwater Hospital Writing Workshop, the Emerging Poets Incubator, the Ragdale Foundation, and Residència Internacional d'Art, Can Serrat.

Isaac’s critical writing can be found in The American Poetry Review, Berkeley Journal of Sociology, Callaloo: A Journal of African Diaspora Arts and Letters, Chicago Review, English Journal, Feminist Pedagogy, and Religion Dispatches, as well as the edited volumes Critical Creative Writing: Essential Readings on the Writer’s Craft (Bloomsbury, 2018) and To Light a Fire: 20 Years with the InsideOut Literary Arts Project (Wayne State University Press, 2015). Isaac’s interviews have been featured on the Commonplace podcast and in Public Books. His poetry appears in literary journals including Callaloo, The Cortland Review, Foglifter, Muzzle, The Periphery, Salamander, Sonora Review, Tupelo Quarterly, Vinyl, and Zone 3, as well as the anthologies Bi+ Lines: An Anthology of Contemporary Bi+ Poets (fourteen poems, 2023), A People’s Atlas of Detroit (Wayne State University Press, 2020) and Uncommon Core: Contemporary Poems for Learning and Living (Red Beard Press, 2013).

Isaac’s chapbook Stopgap won The Sow’s Ear Poetry Review Chapbook Contest and was published in 2019. Isaac is also the author/editor of Studying Up, a biomythographic hypertext written via Substack. They have, for the past two decades, taught as a writer-in-residence for youth arts education organizations across the United States, including Allied Media Projects/People in Education, the Chicago Poetry Center, InsideOut Literary Arts, the James & Grace Lee Boggs School, Palenque LSNA, Urban Word NYC, Youth & Opportunity United (Y.O.U.) and Youth Speaks. Isaac is a proud alum of the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) Teacher Residency Program, and a dues-paying member of the Chicago Teachers Union (American Federation of Teachers Local 1).