[close] Walter M. Miller Jr. was born to Ruth and Walter Miller. He grew up in the American South and studied in University of Tennessee for two years. During World War II, he took part in the Army Air Force as a radioman and tail gunner aboard B-25 bombers and participated in the bombing destruction of Italy and the Balkans, including the Benedictine Abbey of Monte Cassino, which he later regarded as a traumatic experience. He married to Anna Louise Becker and had four children. After studying in University of Texas, although not earning his degree, he was an engineer, working for the rail lines and lived on Social Security. He moved to Florida with his family in 1950s and then spent his lifetime avoiding his family members and visitors.

Miller published prolifically short stories which concern of relationship between humankind and technology, civilisation decay and rebirth, religion and human emotion. One of his short works, 'Darfsteller', won Hugo Awards in 1955. He was best-known for his classic post-apocalyptic novel, A Canticle for Leibowitz, only novel which published in his lifetime, earning him Hugo Awards for best novel in 1961. After his success, he did not publish any.

Walter M. Miller Jr. shot himself on January 9, 1996 in Daytona Beach, Florida, after suffering from depression for decades. His second novel Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman was finished by Terry Bisson and published posthumously in 1997. [close]