With family roots in Georgia, Claire Millikin grew up in Georgia, North Carolina, and overseas. She graduated from Yale with a degree in Philosophy, and later earned her doctorate in English literature from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. She has worked as a janitor, a waitress, and a copywriter. She presently teaches Art History and Sociology at the University of Virginia. Before coming to Charlottesville, she lived for many years in rural coastal Maine.