The Quiet Power of Author Jackie Dove-Miller
Legendary Franklinton native and saxophonist, Freddy Greene
Jackie Dove-Miller didn’t set out to be an author. The Youngsville-based poet, memoirist, novelist, spoken-word artist, and lifelong teacher started, like so many writers often do: as a voracious reader.
“I promised myself in high school that I’d read every book in our little library before I graduated,” she recalls with laughter. Her voice carries the easy cadence of someone who has spent a lifetime observing both the world and her own heart. “It was a tiny library, so I thought, I can do this.” That promise led her to a book that would change the course of her life. Filled with such artists as Langston Hughes, Phillis Wheatley, Robert Hayden, and Gwendolyn Brooks, she was immediately in awe.
“I hadn’t even thought of Black artists, period,” she says, shaking her head slightly as if still surprised by that memory. “And suddenly, I realized, Oh—we write too. I checked that book out over and over again all through high school.”
In ninth grade, she wrote her first real poem, inspired by Jesse Jackson’s famous affirmation, I Am Somebody. Jackie’s version began: I am somebody, and I refuse to let the world pass me by. That sense of claiming space in the world has never left her work. Her poetry would grow from that moment of defiance, carrying her through decades of reflection, grief, love, and the everyday beauty of being alive.
Before she was a published poet, Jackie graduated from St. Andrews Presbyterian College (BA) and NC State University (MA) before spending years as a high school teacher, guiding young minds while quietly nurturing her own writing. Teaching, she says, taught her as much about communication as writing ever did.
“I remember trying to teach poetry to tenth graders,” she recalls with a grin. “I thought I could get them to love it the way I did—but they weren’t having it.” The experience was a revelation: poetry can’t be forced. It has to meet the reader where they are.
That insight would become a cornerstone of her own style. Jackie’s poetry is designed to be approachable. It’s lush with meaning but missing the tangled riddles that put so many, like her students, off of poetry. Over all else, Jackie says “I want people to read my work and understand it.”
For years, Jackie wrote in private. Finally, after going to a writer’s workshop on self-publishing, Jackie decided to finally release her works out into the wild as a published author. Jackie released her first poetry book in 2013. It would be the first of ten, alongside a memoir and a novel.
She dabbled in inspirational poetry, words shaped by her involvement with The Encouraging Place, a Raleigh-based nonprofit working with women striving for emotional and personal growth.
“I’d listen to their conversations after the workshops, and I’d just start writing,” she says. “Those poems felt like God was speaking through me.” One of her most moving pieces from that period, I Want to Matter, left audiences in tears during spoken word performances. “I would watch women cry,” she remembers, her own voice softening. “Those poems weren’t just mine anymore. They belonged to anyone who needed them.”
Jackie’s novel, The Weight, was born almost by accident. It began as a writing prompt shared in her local writers’ group, and she found herself following the story of a woman in her 30s confronting a lifetime of poor romantic choices.
The story unfolds with humor and tenderness, reflecting the slow, sometimes awkward dance of self-discovery. Jackie laughs when she recalls how long the process took. “I’ve always said fiction isn’t my forte. The memoir took twenty years because I had to heal before I could tell my story. The novel took five, but when I finished it, I knew it was good. Not perfect, but good.”
Jackie writes without rigid schedules or forced routines. “I’m a pantser,” she says, using the writer’s term for those who write by the seat of their pants. Inspiration can strike from a single overheard line or a quiet realization. Some poems come in fragments over weeks; others spill onto the page fully formed.
The past few years have brought their share of dry seasons. COVID stalled her creativity, and the loss of her husband in 2023 brought a tide of grief. She has channeled that sorrow into a series of poems, though not yet enough for a full book. “I don’t force it,” she says. “If I sit down with even an inkling of an idea, something will come. But I’ve learned to let it arrive on its own terms.”
Her advice to aspiring writers is as grounded and unpretentious as her poetry: Just write. Don’t worry about making it perfect. Don’t do it for the money. Do it for the love of it. She encourages new writers to join a group for feedback and to learn how to accept critique with grace. “Sharing your writing is like handing someone your newborn baby,” she says with a knowing smile. “You have to be brave enough to let someone hold it.”
Today, Jackie Dove Miller’s presence in Franklin County’s arts community feels like an anchor. She has been published in Carolina Country, Gravity Hill Literary Magazine, County Lines: A Literary Journal and local newspapers and arts magazines. She mentors other writers, shares her work at readings, and continues to self-publish, ensuring her voice reaches the people who need it most. Her poems are the kind you can carry with you, gentle but unflinching, accessible yet profound.
Jackie’s words are steady witnesses. They speak of love and loss, of identity and womanhood, of small-town rhythms and universal truths. They begin in delight, as Robert Frost promised, and end in the kind of wisdom that makes you close the book slowly, letting the silence after the last line do its work.
In Youngsville, where the world moves at its own thoughtful pace, Jackie continues to write, to inspire, and to live the poetry she once discovered in a tiny school library—a voice that insists, after all these years, I am somebody.
