Greg Blake Miller, Ph.D.
Director, Olympian Creative
Master Certified Life Coach
Creativity Consultant & Mentor

Olympian Creative is led by award-winning author, editor and teacher Greg Blake Miller. Over the past two decades, Dr. Miller has helped hundreds of students master the arts of storytelling and critical thinking in his writing and communication courses at the University of Oregon and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, where he currently serves as an assistant professor of narrative media at the Hank Greenspun School of Journalism and Media Studies. At UNLV, Dr. Miller created the Storytelling Workshop and the online journal Rebelfolio; his students have gone on to careers and graduate studies in television, journalism, film, literature and law.

From 2010-2014, Dr. Miller edited the innovative city magazine Vegas Seven, helping to build the publication on multiple platforms and lead it to 95 state and regional honors in its first four years. Miller was named Nevada’s Outstanding Journalist in 2011, and in 2014 Seven won the state’s General Excellence Award.

Dr. Miller has also worked with renowned theatrical directors Franco Dragone and Pavel Brun (Le Réve, Celine Dion’s A New Day) and with film director Kerry Candaele, serving as a writer and producer for Candaele’s critically acclaimed 2013 documentary Following the Ninth: In the Footsteps of Beethoven’s Final Symphony. He is now producing Part II of Candaele’s Beethoven trilogy, Love & Justice: In the Footsteps of Beethoven’s Rebel Opera.

Miller earned his doctorate in communication from the University of Oregon and his master’s degree in creative writing from the University of Southern California, where he won the prestigious Moses Fiction Prize. His research has focused on the productive interplay of individual perception, community history, and creativity; each element shapes and reshapes the others, generating art, politics, and our evolving sense of our place in the world. A former staff writer for The Moscow Times, Miller is also a graduate of the University of Washington’s master’s program in Russian, East European and Central Asian Studies, and has written extensively about culture and creativity in Russia and the former Soviet Union. Miller did his undergraduate work at the University of California, Irvine, graduating summa cum laude in history. He is the author of Reentry Shock, a scholarly study of memory and creativity in post-Stalin Soviet cinema, and the short-story collection Decemberlands.

At each stage of his career, Dr. Miller has been dedicated to helping others—whether colleagues, students, or clients—find their confidence, clarify their goals, maximize their gifts, and find joy in their work.  In 2014, he founded Olympian Creative in order to continue this mission. As an experienced educator, a master certified life coach (MCLC), a seasoned editor, and a working writer and producer, Dr. Miller understands the complexities of the creative life. He is well-positioned to help you face them, navigate them, and accomplish your cherished goals.

Svetlana Larionova Miller
Assistant Director, Olympian Creative

Svetlana Larionova Miller is a writer, illustrator, translator, and linguist. She is a language-learning assessment specialist for Avant Assessment, a nationally respected linguistic testing and teacher-training firm. She also teaches Russian and English as a Second Language to individual clients of all ages. A graduate of the prestigious Moscow Pedagogical University, where she specialized in foreign-language teaching, Svetlana has translated for Russian Studies in Literature and Tretyakov Gallery Magazine, as well as for film and television. She has taught linguistics at Oregon’s Northwest Christian University, where she was also honored for her poetry. Svetlana has won multiple awards for her illustrations for OC Family, and her work has appeared in Vegas Seven, Las Vegas Family, Inland Empire Family and the 2015 book Decemberlands. A 2018 award winner in Helen magazine’s Helen Stewart poetry competition, Svetlana is now working on an illustrated memoir about growing up in the Soviet Union.

To learn about upcoming readings and events, visit Greg’s Facebook author page at Greg Blake Miller Books & Stories. To see more of his work, visit his author blog at ReentryShock.com. For Olympian Creative events and regular insights and tips on storytelling and the creative life, visit Olympian Creative’s Facebook page. Follow us on Twitter @GregBlakeMiller.