Author Rowana Miller Leads Writing Workshops at Harriton

Harriton High School recently welcomed author Rowana Miller for a day of writing-focused programming with students, including a Lunch & Learn presentation and discussion, followed by “thriller workshops” with multiple English classes in the afternoon.

During the first portion of her visit, Miller spoke with students about her path to becoming a writer as well as her first novel, Secrets of the Blue Hand Girls. Later, she guided English students through discussions on the key tropes of the thriller genre before inviting them to write their own suspenseful short scenes. Each session concluded with conversation and Q&A about the writing process, publishing and the life of a working writer.

In addition to authoring Secrets of the Blue Hand Girls, Miller is the founder and executive director of Cosmic Writers, a nonprofit that provides creative writing education for children and teenagers. Through Cosmic Writers, Miller has earned recognition including the 2023 Greater Philadelphia Social Innovation Award for Educational Entrepreneurship and the 2022 Penn President’s Engagement Prize. Her debut novel was also named a Marie Claire Best Thriller of 2025.

According to her educator materials, Miller specializes in teaching dark fiction subgenres as a way to engage young people in the “magic of storytelling,” with favorite workshop topics including villain-building and thriller writing. That focus came through clearly during her visit to Harriton, where students explored what makes a thriller effective, experimented with their own creative writing and heard directly from a working writer about storytelling, revision and publishing.