He won the 2013 Shirley Jackson Award for his short story "57 Reasons for the Slate Quarry Suicides."

His debut novel, The Art of Starving, was published in 2017 and his novel Blackfish City won the 2019 John W. Campbell Memorial Award.

Sam J. Miller grew up in Hudson, New York, where his family ran a butcher shop.

[3][5] Miller studied writing as part at the 2012 Clarion Workshop under authors Holly Black, Cassandra Clare[5] and Ted Chiang.

[6] Miller began regularly publishing his short stories in 2013 with "57 Reasons for the Slate Quarry Suicides" in Nightmare Magazine.

[12] The novel is about a gay, bullied teenage boy who believes that extreme hunger awakens supernatural abilities and is rooted in Miller's own experience with an adolescent eating disorder.