Joan Esther Millman

She was the daughter of the late Julius and Anna Michelin. She was also predeceased by her sister, Adele Gross.

The lifelong New Englander was born in Boston, where she attended public schools and graduated from Brighton High School. She earned a bachelor’s degree from Boston University and taught in the Wayland, Massachusetts, public schools before raising four children. She later added a Master’s Degree in Creative Writing from Brown University.

Joan Millman’s passion was literary fiction - reading it and writing it. She excelled in one of literature’s most difficult forms, the short story. She studied under Pennsylvania novelist John Gardner at the Bead Loaf literary colony in Middlebury, Vermont, and enjoyed two fellowships at New York’s famed Yaddo artists colony. Her stories appeared in quarterlies like the Virginia Quarterly and the Carolina Quarterly, and her collection, “The Effigy,” won the University of Missouri Press’ prestigious Breakthrough Prize in Short Fiction in 1989.

Ms. Millman was an accomplished journalist, contributing articles for decades to top New England newspapers including The Boston Globe, the Worcester Telegram and the MetroWest Daily News, as well as travelogues for numerous newspapers and magazines. She was a generous teacher of writing. Besides teaching English composition and creative writing at such Massachusetts institutions as Emerson College and Framingham and Salem State University campuses, she also conducted writers’ salons out of her Boston home. Many of her students became published authors.

Surviving are her children Josh (Debby) of Harrisburg, Joel of Geneva, Switzerland, Jennifer (Wolfgang) of Hudson New York, and Julia of New York City. Also surviving are nine grandchildren and three great grandchildren.

The funeral occurred on Monday, April 6th. Charitable donations can be made to the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference of Middlebury, Vermont, Yaddo of Saratoga Springs, New York or to her admirers’ favorite charities that would have resonated with her.