Marla Miller Honored with St. Botolph Foundation Distinguished Artist Award

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The St. Botolph Club Foundation has named Marla Miller, Distinguished Professor of History and Associate Dean for Strategic Initiatives at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, the 2025 recipient of its Distinguished Artist Award in historical nonfiction literature.

Miller, a historian of U.S. women, work, and material culture, is the first historian to be recognized with this honor. The Foundation presents the Distinguished Artist Award annually to a New England–based practitioner in music, literature, or the visual arts who has produced a significant body of work and contributed meaningfully as a teacher, mentor, or activist in their field.

In announcing the award, the Foundation highlighted Miller’s 2010 book Betsy Ross and the Making of America, which historian Douglas Brinkley called “a stupendous literary achievement.”

“I’m over the moon to have received this recognition, and to be on any list with Richard Wilbur and Elizabeth Bishop,” said Miller. “Helping readers connect with the people and places of the past depends a good bit on an author’s ability to bring unknown worlds to life in ways that feel both familiar and surprising. I’ve been fortunate to have, across the whole of my education and career, mentors, models, and peers whose dedication to the craft of writing is deep, and infectious.”

Miller, a prizewinning historian, has published four books, two edited collections, and numerous articles. She joined the UMass Amherst History Department in 1999, directed the Public History Program from 2002 to 2021, and now serves as Associate Dean for Strategic Initiatives in the College of Humanities and Fine Arts, advancing interdisciplinary collaborations that connect humanities research to pressing contemporary issues.

Miller will receive the award during a ceremony at the St. Botolph Club in Boston on Wednesday, June 11, 2025. As part of the event, she will deliver a presentation titled A Comradeship of Beauty – An Inspiring Tale of Love and Art from 1930s New England. The talk explores the lives of stage performer Normena Mackinnon and poet-painter Gertrude Tiemer.

More about the award and past recipients can be found on the St. Botolph Foundation website.