Davis Miller, Author

Davis Miller is the author of a trilogy of critically acclaimed books of creative non-fiction, including the number-one international bestseller The Tao of Muhammad Ali: A Fathers and Sons Memoir (Random House/Vintage U.K., 1997), for which Miller won the first-ever North Carolina Arts Council Creative Non-fiction Writers Grant, the number-three international bestseller The Tao of Bruce Lee: my martial arts memoir (Random House/Vintage U.K., 2001) and, most recently, Approaching Ali: A Reclamation in Three Acts (W. W. Norton/Liveright Publishing, 2016). He is also author of the fiction and creative non-fiction story collection The Zen of Muhammad Ali: and other obsessions (Random House/Vintage U.K., 2003), a number-eight bestseller published expressly for U.K. readers.

In 1999, David Halberstam judged Miller’s story “My Dinner with Ali” one of the twenty best American literary sports stories of the twentieth century. In addition, the Sunday Magazine Editors Association judged “My Dinner with Ali” the best essay published in an American newspaper magazine in 1990. The Miami Herald nominated Miller’s personal essay "The Zen of Muhammad Ali" for the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for feature writing. In 2010, Cool News named “My Dinner with Ali” one of the world’s best-ever magazine stories.

Miller’s fiction and non-fiction (memoir, personal essays and hybrid creative non-fiction) have been published in Esquire (U.K.), GQ (U.K.), Men's Journal, Sports Illustrated, Rolling Stone, and Sport Magazine (from 1989 to 1997, Miller was Sport’s Contributing Editor-at-Large), as well as in numerous other national and international magazines, and also in The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, The Hartford Courant, The Miami Herald, The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune, The Louisville Courier-Journal, (New York) Newsday, The Raleigh News and Observer, The Houston Chronicle, The Seattle Times, The Guardian (U.K.), The Independent (U.K.), The Observer (U.K.), and The Telegraph (U.K.), among many others. He has written a documentary feature film for Warner Brothers, two long-form documentary radio programs for BBC 4, and he has been a commentator for NPR's All Things Considered.

Miller's transformed-by-Muhammad-Ali tales have been developed into a chamber opera by composer D. J. Sparr for the Washington National Opera; in June 2013 the opera received its world premiere in critically acclaimed sold-out performances at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Along with Pulitzer Prize-winning librettist Mark Campbell, Miller is co-librettist of that work. As of 2026, the opera has been produced by opera companies in various U.S. cities, including Raleigh (North Carolina Opera, 2015), Las Vegas (Opera Las Vegas, 2023), Baton Rouge (Opera Louisiane, 2024) and Asheville (Asheville Lyric Opera, 2018).

In addition, The Tao of Muhammad Ali has been developed into an immersive podcast series for Ron Howard and Brian Grazer’s Imagine Entertainment & Television. Miller wrote and hosts that series, which premiered on iHeartMedia in 2024.

Along with his writing and producing partner, Derek Jennings, Miller is presently developing his books The Tao of Muhammad Ali and Approaching Ali into a dramatic feature film. Miller lives in Asheville, North Carolina, which, ever since the beginning of the 20th Century, has been nicknamed the Paris of the American South.

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Books:

The Tao of Muhammad Ali: A Fathers and Sons Memoir (Vintage U.K., 1997)

The Tao of Bruce Lee: my martial arts memoir (Vintage U.K., 2000)

The Zen of Muhammad Ali: and other obsessions (Vintage U.K., 2003)

Approaching Ali: A Reclamation in Three Acts (W. W. Norton/Liveright Publishing, 2016)

Opera libretto:

Approaching Ali (with composer D. J. Sparr and co-librettist Mark Campbell, as commissioned by the Washington National Opera and premiered at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, 2013)

Podcast series:

The Tao of Muhammad Ali (a collaboration with Ron Howard and Brian Grazer’s Imagine Entertainment & Television and iHeartMedia, 2024)