Miles grew up in the Midwest of the United States and worked as a cub reporter for Journal Star in Peoria, Illinois.
In 2014 Miles was on the faculty of the MFA program at Chatham University and works as writer-in-residence for Green Mountain College in Poultney, Vermont.
Her second book, All Standing: The Remarkable Story of the Jeanie Johnston, The Legendary Irish Famine Ship was published by Simon & Schuster in 2013.
The book chronicles the story of the Jeanie Johnston, which Miles called "the world's luckiest ship" in an interview on NPR.
[3] In 2014 she wrote Superstorm: Nine Days Inside Hurricane Sandy, which was "the first complete moment-by-moment account of the largest Atlantic storm on record.".