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Camp Dissertation: A Humane Guide for Tackling Your Weighty Writing Project
After years of intense study, finally writing your dissertation might feel emotionally and intellectually impossible. Tiya Miles’s Camp A Humane Guide for Tackling Your Whopper of a Writing Project is a practical and empathetic guide for current and prospective dissertation writers and anyone seeking to hone their writing practice. Using the metaphor of Camp Dissertation—a crew hiking the mountain of dissertation writing together—Miles offers concrete strategies drawn from reflections on her own decades of academic writing, collective wisdom from her mentors and colleagues, and testimonies from her former and current students. Personal, at times playful, and always wise, Miles’s advice ranges from how to choose your dissertation topic to how to balance the evolving commitments of graduate studies, teaching, financial stressors, and personal and family life. Camp Dissertation is a rare, honest look at the joys and challenges of dissertation writing, supporting students with tools and techniques to tackle every stage of the journey.
121 pages, Paperback
Published October 2, 2025
About the author
Tiya Miles
18 books567 followersTiya Miles is from Ohio, "the heart of it all," though now she spends summers in her husband's native Montana. She is the author of All That She Carried (which won a National Book Award for nonfiction and more), and of three prize-winning works of history on the intersections of African American and Native American experience. Her forthcoming book, Night Flyer: Harriet Tubman and the Faith Dreams of a Free People, will be out in June 2024, right on the heels of her short but sweet exploration of childhoods in nature: Wild Girls: How the Outdoors Shaped the Women Who Challenged a Nation (September 2024). Her debut dual time period (historical-contemporary) novel based on her early career research, The Cherokee Rose: A Novel of Gardens and Ghosts, was revised with new scenes and released as a paperback original by Random House in June 2023; check out the new version! She has also published a study of haunted plantations and manor homes in the South that reads like a travel narrative. (And she is as surprised as you are that two of her books focus on ghosts!) Her newest book, just out from W. W. Norton, is Wild Girls: How the Outdoors Shaped the Women Who Challenged a Nation. Tiya's favorite activities are reading good books while her three teenaged kids write stories together in the background, spending time in old houses, walking along forest trails, and drinking hot chocolate. She is currently working on a history, a novel, and essays about climate change and historic sites. Check out her Substack: Carrying Capacity, for news and updates! https://tiyamiles.substack.com/
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October 15, 2025
Highly recommend Camp Dissertation for any Ph.D. student who needs support tackling their dissertation project!
As someone embarking on dissertation planning, I’ve read several “how-to” guides. Most offer a few gems on writing or structuring time but nevertheless feel removed from the actual process of choosing a topic, working with a committee, and staying grounded while handling all the complexities and emotions of grad school. But Tiya Miles manages to offer us a concise yet thorough roadmap for navigating all of these steps in Camp Dissertation.
This guide is rich with advice from Miles and her graduate students on how to choose a topic, outline, establish writing rituals, revise, and communicate with committee members. It also includes a resource list, templates, and guided questions that will help any Ph.D. student feel more rooted. But perhaps most helpfully, Miles hands students a roadmap that embraces the messiness of life throughout the writing process, and weaves advice on deadlines with guidance on working with peers, adjusting your goals when you have extenuating events come up, and caring for your mental and physical health along the way. This is what makes this guide a “Humane Guide for Tackling” a dissertation, and it’s sure to set this guide apart from others.
If you are looking for a roadmap through every step of the dissertation process, invest in a copy of Camp Dissertation to mark up and carry with you along the way!
As someone embarking on dissertation planning, I’ve read several “how-to” guides. Most offer a few gems on writing or structuring time but nevertheless feel removed from the actual process of choosing a topic, working with a committee, and staying grounded while handling all the complexities and emotions of grad school. But Tiya Miles manages to offer us a concise yet thorough roadmap for navigating all of these steps in Camp Dissertation.
This guide is rich with advice from Miles and her graduate students on how to choose a topic, outline, establish writing rituals, revise, and communicate with committee members. It also includes a resource list, templates, and guided questions that will help any Ph.D. student feel more rooted. But perhaps most helpfully, Miles hands students a roadmap that embraces the messiness of life throughout the writing process, and weaves advice on deadlines with guidance on working with peers, adjusting your goals when you have extenuating events come up, and caring for your mental and physical health along the way. This is what makes this guide a “Humane Guide for Tackling” a dissertation, and it’s sure to set this guide apart from others.
If you are looking for a roadmap through every step of the dissertation process, invest in a copy of Camp Dissertation to mark up and carry with you along the way!
Displaying 1 of 1 review