Miranda July Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Short Stories/Novellas

Publication Order of Collections

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Publication Order of Anthologies

Miranda July is an American author, actress, screenwriter, and director.

She was born with the name Miranda Jennifer Grossinger on February 15, 1974. She has done everything from film to monologue to live performance art, fiction, and digital presentations. She changed her name legally in her early twenties based off a character with that name inspired by her that was written by a friend.

As an author, Miranda has written the 2007 short story collection No One Belongs here More Than You, It Chooses You, a 2011 collection of nonfiction short stories, The First Bad Man in 2015 and All Fours in 2024, both fictional novels.

Miranda was the daughter of two writers, Lindy and Richard, both teaching at the time at Goddard College. They founded North Atlantic Books together. She was first encouraged to work more on writing short fiction by Rick Moody, a fellow author.

Miranda grew up in Berkeley, California. She began putting on plays at a local club and attended high school at Oakland’s The College Preparatory School. She wrote her own play The Lifers when she was sixteen years old, directing the play and casting it. Miranda would later go to the University of California Santa Cruz film festival, but ultimately dropped out during her sophomore year and relocated to Portland, Oregon. There she put on her own one woman shows and being part of the ‘riot grrrl’ scene of the nineties.

When just starting out in film, she came up with her own video projects. She also worked day jobs while tending to her art, being employed as everything from a Coca-Cola taste maker to a waitress, stripper, and locksmith. She also came up with her own project called Joanie4Jackie, where participants would sent in their own short films to her and get back a compilation of theirs and nine others. Her own film Atlanta was on the series’ second tape. She transferred the project to the Bard College film department to run in 2003. An archive was donated by July to the Getty Research Institute in 2016.

Miranda July has been part of films such as Me and You and Everyone We Know, which debuted in 2005 after winning a Sundance workshop space. The movie was the 2005 Cannes Film Festival’s Camera d’or prize and the Special Jury Prize at Sundance, as well as many more awards. She also released her movie The Future at the 2011 Sundance Festival and released Kajillionaire on 2020, part of the Plan B Entertainment and Annapurna Pictures productions.

The Amateurist came out in 1998 and won several awards, and Nest of Tens was released in 2000. She has been consulted for aspects of The Center of the World, a 2001 movie, and has appeared in the documentary Turn It around: The Story of East Bay Punk and was interviewed for Women Art Revolution. She was also the narrator for Fire of Love, a documentary.

Miranda July has also released her own music, from an EP for Kill Rock Stars to her own full length LPs, 10 Million Hours A Mile (1997) and The Binet Simon Test (1998). She also worked on Dub Narcotic Sound System with Calvin Johnson and make a split EP with IQU in 1999.

Miranda has also acted in many projects, her own short films and also Jesus’s Son. She was additionally in a Portlandia episode in 2012. She was also in the film Madeline’s Madeline. She made a live movie called Love Diamond in 1999, then The Swan Tool, a performance piece, and the film Getting Stronger Every Day in 2001, running a total of six minutes.

Miranda has also made more multimedia pieces and released her performance work New Society in 2015 in the 58th San Francisco International Film Festival. She also founded Learning to Love You More with artist Harrell Fletcher, an online art project that ran for seven years. The site gave assignments to artists and compiled exhibitions for various museums, with a book of the online art published in 2007. It was acquired by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 2010.

July has also done sculptural work, such as her exhibition Eleven Heavy Things, which debuted at the Venice Biennale in 2009 and then shown at Union Square Park in NYC and the MOCA Pacific Design Center in Los Angeles. She also put together the art project We Think Alone in 2013, which focused on private emails from public figures that were donated by a group of people and grouped by topic, with a new set sent out weekly to subscribers for twenty weeks.

Miranda came out with an iOS app in 2014 called Somebody. It lets users write a message that can be delivered in person to someone else or to deliver the message from someone else in person. The app closed down in 2015.

The artist also came up with Services, a collaboration of a limited edition book and sculpture with Mack Books where the book/sculpture is made up of texts and photos sent between Jay Benedicto and July. Twenty-five copies only were available for purchase.

She also was the lookbook creative director for the Uniqlo UT 2019 clothing line. She is married to Mike Mills, a film maker and visual artist. They have a child together born in 2012. They first met at the Sundance Festival in 2005 at the premieres of their movies. The couple have since separated by still co-parent and live together.

Miranda also writes short stories and notes that it’s something she has done years before getting into film making. The Boy From Lam Kien, a short story she wrote, came out in 2005 as a special-edition book with illustrations. Her short story Something That Needs Nothing came out the next year in The New Yorker.

No One Belongs Here More Than You is her collection of short stories that came out in 2007. The book won the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award the same year. It Chooses You was a nonfiction story collection that came out in 2011.

The First Bad Man is a fictional novel from Miranda July. Published in 2015, this is a great book to check out if you want something new to read. The main character is named Cheryl Glickman.

She’s a woman of middle age who finds herself in the middle of a crisis when a young woman moves into her home. The woman’s name is Clee and her life changes from the woman moving in.

Cheryl is a woman who is somewhat tightly wound and lives alone. She met a baby boy when she was six years old, and he’s haunting her, showing up as other people’s babies.

She also has a personal obsession with Philip, a board member at the women’s self-defense nonprofit where she resides. She thinks that they’ve been together in many different lifetimes and just have yet to make love in this one.

Then her bosses ask if a young girl can move in with her for a bit. Clee is a beautiful blonde girl who is both selfish and cruel. But it may be her that brings Cheryl back to reality and gives her a love that will last for a lifetime. Funny and interesting, be sure to check this book out!

All Fours is the second novel from Miranda July. It was released in 2024. If you like original stories, give this book a try.

An artist who is fairly famous announces her plan to drive from Los Angeles to New York City. But a half hour after leaving her spouse and child at home, she gets off the freeway, checks into a hotel, and goes on a different journey entirely. Thrilling and interesting, be sure to give All Fours a read if you’re looking for new and exciting fiction!