An Alabama native, Norman MacMillan is retired from the University of Montevallo English department. His memoir Distant Son: An Alabama Boyhood was published in 2002 by the Cahaba Trail Commission. His plays, Truman Capote: Against a Copper Sky and Ashes and Roses (based on stories of Mary Ward Brown), have been produced in Monroeville, Mobile, Montgomery, Montevallo, and Marion, Alabama.