Chanel Miller Books In Order

Publication Order of Memoirs

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Chanel Miller
Chanel Miller was born June 12, 1992 in Palo Alto, California and is a writer and artist. Chanel is the older of two daughters of an American dad and a Chinese mom. Her mom emigrated from China to become a writer while her dad is a retired therapist. She got her BA in Literature from the College of Creative Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Her memoir, titled “Know My Name”, was published by Viking Books in the year 2019, and quickly became a bestseller and was critically acclaimed.

Her memoir was a New York Times Book Review Notable Book, a National Book Critics Circle Award, a New York Times bestseller, and was a best book of the year 2019 in the Washington Post, Time, NPR, the Chicago Tribune, and People, among others. She was a 2016 and 2019 Glamour Woman of the Year honoree and a Time Next 100 honoree in 2019 under her pseudonym Emily Doe.

On the evening of January 17, 2015, she went to a Kappa Alpha frat party at Stanford University with her sister. Later that night, two Stanford grad students found Miller lying on the ground behind a dumpster with another student, and a nineteen year old Brock Turner lying on top of her. She was unconscious, and partially unclothed, with alcohol in her system.

Turner attempted to flee and was caught and held down on the ground by two other men while they waited for cops to show up. He was arrested and indicted on five felony sexual assault charges, which he pleaded not guilty to. He was convicted of these charges in 2016 and was sentenced to just six months imprisonment, a sentence that sparked pubic outrage due to its leniency. The sentencing judge, named Aaron Persky, was recalled two years after.

The day after Turner was sentenced, Chanel posted a 7,137 word victim impact statement on BuzzFeed as “Emily Doe” for the sake of her anonymity on June 3, 2016. It was quickly reprinted by some major news outlets like The New York Times.

As the case was going to trial, she would perform stand up comedy, as she finds life to be generally ridiculous, wacky, and profane. It helped her to face the day. She could yell and swear onstage and depict herself anyway she wanted to without any criticism or reprimands telling her that she was not allowed to act a certain way or be a certain way. There were no boundaries. While she was in the courtroom, she felt colorless, bland, and diluted. At the end of the day, she needed the freedom to not have to take life so very seriously at all times.

She relinquished her anonymity in September of 2019 and was interviewed on 60 Minutes, where she was reunited with the two Swedish graduate students that stopped her assailant.

While she was writing her memoir, she was constantly drawing as a way to let her mind breathe, reminding herself that life is imaginative and playful. Everyone deserves, she believes, their chance to define themselves, shape our identities, and tell our tales.

Chanel turned these drawings into a film, called “I Am With You”. She says that almost the entire crew that worked on the film was women. Their support and being able to create together was incredibly healing for her. She finds that people should be creating the space for survivors to speak their truths and be able to express themselves freely.

“Know My Name” is Chanel’s memoir that was released in the year 2019. She was only known to the world as Emily Doe when she shocked millions of people with a letter. Brock Turner just got sentenced to six months in county jail after being found guilty of sexually assaulting her on Stanford’s campus. Her victim impact statement was posted on BuzzFeed, where it immediately went viral-viewed by eleven million people in only four days, and translated globally and read on the floor of Congress. It inspired changes in California law and the judge on the case was even recalled. Thousands of people wrote to say that she had given them the courage to share their own experiences of assault for the very first time.

Now she takes back her identity to tell her tale of transcendence, trauma, and the power of words. It was the perfect case, in all kinds of ways, since there were eyewitnesses, physical evidence was secured immediately, and Turner ran away. However her struggles with shame and isolation during the trial and the aftermath reveal the oppression that victims face in even the best-case scenarios. Her tale illuminates a culture biased to keep the perpetrators safe, indicts a criminal justice system that is designed to fail those most vulnerable, and, ultimately, shines with courage that is required to move through suffering and live a beautiful and full life.

This memoir is going to forever transform how we think about sexual assault, challenging our beliefs about what is acceptable and speaking truth to the tumultuous reality of healing. It also introduces all of the readers to one extraordinary writer, one whose words have changed the world already. Entwining resilience, humor, and pain, this memoir is going to stand as a modern classic.

This gives readers the chance to know her not just as Emily Doe but also as Chanel Miller the artist, the survivor, the fighter, and the writer. This is a superbly written memoir that is also a gut-punch, yet in the end is somehow able to also be blessedly hopeful. She details her experiences with waking up in the hospital, her panic attacks and outbursts of emotion in private and when she was testifying in court, and the painstaking climb to heal and recover herself in this world with a lot of people looking to discredit her in such a way that makes you feel like you are right there along with her.

Chanel is able to pen a memoir that converts the ongoing experience of sexual assault into an outstanding piece of literature.