JM Miro Books in Order

J.M. Miro is the pen name Canadian novelist and poet Steven Price uses for his dark historical fantasy. Price grew up in Victoria, British Columbia, and has carried the feel of the Pacific coast into his work: unsettled weather, old streets, family history, and the sense that familiar places can quickly become strange.

Before writing fantasy as Miro, Price built a career as a poet and novelist. He studied writing at the University of Victoria, earning a BFA in 2000, then went on to the University of Virginia for an MFA in poetry. He later returned to teach poetry and fiction in Victoria.

Poetry was his first published form. The Anatomy of Keys, a book-length work about Harry Houdini, earned the Gerald Lampert Award for a first poetry collection. His next collection, Omens in the Year of the Ox, also brought him a Canadian poetry prize.

His first novel, Into That Darkness, came from a very local fear. While he was in graduate school in Virginia during the September 11 attacks, Price began wondering what a devastating disaster might do to his home city. The result was a post-earthquake novel set in Victoria, focused less on disaster spectacle than on people trying to endure its aftermath.

Price kept moving between private lives and larger histories. By Gaslight takes readers into Victorian London, following a detective story shaped by crime, family secrets, and the city itself. A story about his great-grandfather's journey from London to Victoria helped set that book in motion.

With Lampedusa, he turned to the final years of Italian writer Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa as he works on The Leopard. Price had read and reread that novel since his university days, and he has described finding the seed for his own book after reading about Tomasi's life. He tends to begin with a person, a place, or one question that keeps nagging at him.

Then came a new name and a much larger supernatural canvas. As J.M. Miro, Price launched Ordinary Monsters, the opening book in the Talents Trilogy, and followed it with Bringer of Dust. These novels bring gifted children, detectives, monsters, and a dangerous border between life and death into an alternate Victorian world.

The change of genre makes sense when you look back at his earlier work. Price grew up reading fantasy and speculative fiction, and his books often return to people caught in frightening circumstances, whether those dangers are historical, natural, or supernatural. He likes a setting with real weight underfoot.

Price lives in the Pacific Northwest with his family. Alongside the books, teaching has remained part of his working life. He has spoken plainly about the value of routine: writing may look like sitting still, but it is still work.