the official bio

Allison J.P. Miller, MA is a writer, designer, research communications specialist and erstwhile literature student passionate about the dynamic interplay between science and spirituality in narrative art. By day, she helps tell the stories of scientists and scholars pursuing groundbreaking work in quantum physics, sociology, renewable energy, and environmental science at a Tier 1 research institution in Colorado. By night, she reads and writes like it’s her second job. 

the unofficial bio

Since my early adolescence, three core fascinations have been engaged in an ongoing dance inside of me: storytelling, spirituality, and science.

Stories came first. The powerful metaphors I found in the fiction I read as a child helped me process the world and my relationship to it in ways that school, family, and friends couldn’t. They were the way I recognized God before I was handed theology by the church I grew up in—I simply knew, on a bodily level, when I had stumbled across deep truth in a story.

Spirituality got tangled up in story for me as soon as I became aware of the fact that sacred texts rely on every literary device under the sun to communicate Big Ideas about divinity, humanity, nature, life, death, and meaning. What does understanding religion on a narrative level—as the story of humanity’s evolving relationship with the Divine, for example, experienced both within and outside ourselves—unlock that simply isn’t accessible on the literal level?

Science burst onto the dance floor with the revelation that scientific models are metaphors, too; that the biggest paradigm shifts have come from the scientists with the greatest imaginations; and that the picture of reality sketched by today’s physicists, bioscientists, and neuroscientists is in profound accord with the wisdom of mystics and myth-makers from across world religions and histories.

story is my first language; science is one I’m still learning

Story has always been how I most productively process life. I collect metaphors like other people collect stamps or seashells. The more I have, the better equipped I feel to engage this complicated reality we all share. Fiction doesn’t enchant the world for me so much as it reveals what’s already enchanted within it. When I’m sleepwalking through my days, a good story will wake me up.

Science does the same thing: It opens my eyes. It rewires frayed or dead connections in my mental architecture; it expands my sense of reality.

Here comes the disclaimer: I freely admit that I am a layperson engaging with concepts and theories outside of my own chosen disciplines (which are the English language, literature, and graphic design). Still, learning about science and wrestling with its revelations—as well as the advances it’s sparking in the world today—is incredibly important to me, not just professionally as a research communicator but personally. A hundred-odd years ago, public engagement with science was a normal thing. Our world desperately needs it to become normal again, even (especially) when it’s difficult.