photo: Meqo Sam Cecil
Jeff Miller has published Ghost Pine (originally Otaku) since 1996. Whether documenting his youth in suburban Ottawa in the late 1990s, travels across North America or his current home of Montreal, Miller’s autobiographical stories isolate the small moments and overlooked details of everyday life. His stories are equal measures funny and sad, nostalgic and unsentimental, punk rock and grandparents.
Ghost Pine: All Stories True (Invisible Publishing) collects the best stories from the zine’s first thirteen years as well as over fifty pages of new and previously unpublished material.
Over the years Miller has sold nearly ten thousand copies of his long-running, self-published zine, putting him at the forefront of a thriving underground cultural movement. His writing has also appeared in The 2nd Hand, Broken Pencil, Zine Yearbook and The Art of Trespassing.
Born and raised in Ottawa, he has lived in Montreal for the past decade, where he continues to write.
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“Finally, the best stories from Canada’s longest running and best punk zine all in one long-overdue book! Jeff Miller is a collector of lost moments and a poet of the back alleys of the heart where we tenderly but ferociously guard innocence, inspiration, and our deepest fragile hopes from an indifferent world. Ghost Pine is a tree fort, a train yard, a treasure map. A refuge.”
Erick Lyle, author of On the Lower Frequencies
“Jeff Miller writes raw truths like an innocent, describes people with harsh forgiveness, and sees the dreary world we inhabit as if it were brand new. He makes all memories beautiful, even the painful ones.There’s no other voice like his.”
Emily Pohl-Weary, author of A Girl Like Sugar and
Strange Times at Western High
