Chanel Miller

Chanel Miller (Chinese name Zhang Xiao Xia; Chinese: 张小夏; born June 1992) is an American writer based in San Francisco, California. She first came into the public eye anonymously after she was sexually assaulted on the campus of Stanford University in 2015. The victim impact statement she wrote and read at her assailant's sentencing hearing the following year went viral after being published online by Buzzfeed. Miller was referred to as Emily Doe in court documents and in media reports until September 2019, when she relinquished her anonymity and published the best-selling memoir Know My Name. She is credited with sparking national discussion in the United States about the treatment of sexual assault cases and victims by college campuses and court systems.

Chanel Miller was born in June 1992 in Palo Alto, California. Her mother emigrated from China to become a writer and her father is a retired therapist. Her Chinese name is Zhang Xiao Xia (Chinese: 张小夏; transl. little summer). She has a younger sister. She attended the University of California, Santa Barbara at the College of Creative Studies where she graduated with a degree in literature in 2014.

On the evening of January 17, 2015, Miller accompanied her sister to a Kappa Alpha fraternity party at Stanford University; later that night, two Stanford graduate students found Miller lying on a dumpster site on the campus with another Stanford student, 19-year-old Brock Turner, on top of her. Miller was unconscious, with alcohol in her system. When he tried to flee, Turner was caught and held down on the ground by the other two men as they waited for police to arrive. Turner was arrested and indicted on five sexual assault charges, to which he pleaded not guilty. In 2016, he was convicted of three of these charges and was sentenced to six months' imprisonment—a sentence which sparked public outrage due to its leniency. Sentencing judge Aaron Persky was recalled two years later.

The 7,137-word-long victim impact statement by Miller, who was referred to in court documents and media reports as "Emily Doe" for the sake of her anonymity, was published by Buzzfeed on June 3, 2016, the day after Turner was sentenced, and was reprinted in other major news outlets such as The New York Times.

In September 2019, Miller relinquished her anonymity, being interviewed on 60 Minutes and publishing a memoir entitled Know My Name. The book, published by Viking Books, became a best-seller, was named one of the top ten books of 2019 by the Washington Post and was nominated for Best Memoir & Autobiography at the 2019 Goodreads Choice Awards. The New York Times also selected Know My Name for its "100 Notable Books of 2019."

Miller's story and the legal case "sparked a nationwide discussion about rape on college campuses and how survivors were not being heard" and "became part of the intense debates around rape, sexism and sexual misconduct over the past years," including the Me Too movement.

On November 1, 2016, Glamour named Miller a woman of the year for "changing the conversation about sexual assault forever", citing that her impact statement had been read over 11 million times. Miller attended the award ceremony anonymously. In November 2019, after the publication of her book, Miller attended Glamour's award ceremony again, where she was again recognized as a Woman of the Year. She delivered a poem on stage, in which she advocated for the well-being of sexual assault survivors. She was listed as an influential person in Time's 2019 100 Next list.

• Know My Name (2019)