Abby Millager was born April 8, 1962 in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. When she turned eight, her father took a job with the UN. The family lived in Addis Ababa (where she attended school in French), Nairobi, Vienna, Barbados and Bangkok. After graduating from Yale with a BA in Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry, Millager earned an MD at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. She completed an internship in Family Medicine at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center before concluding that the practice of Medicine was not for her.
She began writing poetry and attending readings and workshops in and around Worcester, Massachusetts. She served on the Board of Poetry Oasis, a local nonprofit literary group, and participated in Poets in the Schools. In 2001, Millager co-founded Diner: a journal of poetry, interviews and reviews with fellow poet Eve Rifkah. The following year, Millager received her MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars.
In 2003, Millager’s family relocated to Frisco, Texas where she taught English Composition at Collin County Community College. Also that year, she was a finalist for the Slope Editions Book Prize and the Alice James NY/NE Award. Millager moved to Delaware in 2005.
In 2007 she received a Delaware Division of the Arts Opportunity Grant and a Vermont Studio Center fellowship. She was later selected to take part in the DDOA writing retreat at the Biden Center in Lewes, DE, and subsequently edited the anthology Cape Henlopen Poets 2008. In 2009 the DDOA awarded her an Individual Emerging Artist Fellowship in Poetry. She has recently read her work at the Deer Park Tavern, Newark; Booksandcoffee, Dewey; 2nd Saturday Poets, Wilmington; and the Poets at the Beach series, in Lewes, Rehoboth and Bethany Beach. Her satire on artist statements, "The Emperor's New," was part of the 2009 Wilmington Fringe Festival. She recently published a chapbook, Hairwork (Doll's Eye Press, 2010). In addition, she is Letters Chair for the National League of American PEN Women. Millager lives and writes among the mushroom farms of northern Newark.
