Walter James Miller (1918–2010)

[excerpt from the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts website]
Walter James Miller (1918–2010) was an American literary critic, playwright, poet, and translator. He was the author, co-author, editor and/or translator of more than sixty books, including four landmark critical editions of Jules Verne, several collections of original poetry, and critical commentaries and editions of Beckett, Bradbury, Conrad, Dickens, Doctorow, Dumas, Heller, Homer, Shakespeare, and Vonnegut. He wrote extensively for television and radio, and his verse drama was staged and revived off-Broadway. During a distinguished career as an educator and advocate for the liberal arts he taught at Hofstra University, Polytechnic Institute of New York University, Colorado State University, and for over 40 years at New York University, where he created a popular “Great Books” course, and in 1980 received the NYU Alumni Great Teacher Award. In the 1960s and 1970s, he scripted, produced, and hosted numerous television and radio series on the arts, literature, and technology, and his Peabody Award-winning show Reader's Almanac was a fixture on WNYC, public radio in New York City.