About

Sally J. McMillan spent twenty-two years at the University of Tennessee, where she was a professor of communication, department head, associate dean, and vice provost. In retirement, she writes fiction, essays, poetry, and news articles at the intersection of communication, technology, and American life.Her writing is also informed by her earlier work as a high school teacher, book editor, nonprofit leader, journalist, technology-company executive, and higher-education consultant. McMillan lives in Seattle, Washington.

Fiction

McMillan's debut novel titled My Name Is Allen White is targeted for publication in 2026. Allen White was taught to be a believer. Instead, he became a nuclear physicist, astrophotographer, and musician.Raised in a faith community that discouraged questions, Allen’s inquiries took him places that his church and his father could not tolerate. Narrated by Allen himself at age thirty-three, My Name Is Allen White unfolds across three pivotal discoveries, each one a wonder, each one a wound.The upheavals of mid-twentieth-century America provide an expansive backdrop to Allen’s personal challenges. But his great controversy unfolds in the narrow foreground of home.

Anthologies

Two of McMillan's poems and one essay were accepted for publication in the International Women's Writing Guild 50th Anniversary Anthology: Something Inside So Strong—Women's Words on Resilience, Resistance, and Reverence published in 2026 thanks to a Grant from the Kettering Foundation.McMillan is also collaborating with a group of Seattle-area writers to create an anthology of short-form writing that focuses on citizenship. Some members of the group wrote a similar book, Writing While Masked, which documented 2020 – the first year of the COVID epidemic.

• Something Inside So Strong

• Writing While Masked

Journalism

McMillan's most recent journalistic work has been for Post Alley, a Seattle-based writers’ collective aimed at helping fill gaps in local journalism and exploring new ways of delivering quality reporting and commentary. She writes primarily about higher education, media trends, and her Ballard neighborhood.

• Post Alley Publications

Academic Writing

McMillan's academic work explored how people and institutions adapt to changes in the media landscape. Her most recent scholarly book, Digital Immigrants and Media Integration (2023), examined how a generation shaped by analog communication technology came to rely on smartphones.

• Digital Immigrants and Media Integration

• Google Scholar Profile

Contact

Contact through LinkedIn or by email: sjmcmill74 (at) gmail.com