Madeline Miller

Madeline Miller (born July 24, 1978, in Boston, Massachusetts) is an American novelist whose debut work The Song of Achilles (2011) won the Women's Prize for Fiction, making her the fourth debut novelist to win the prize. She grew up in New York City and Philadelphia, where she was introduced to Greek mythology by her mother—a librarian who began reading her the Iliad at age five. She attended Brown University, earning both bachelor's and master's degrees in classics in 2000 and 2001 respectively, and later studied at the University of Chicago and Yale School of Drama. Before publishing her first novel, Miller taught Latin, Greek, and Shakespeare to high school students for over a decade. The Song of Achilles tells the love story of Achilles and Patroclus and is noted for its lyrical prose and emotional depth. It spent ten years in development before being published and became an international bestseller. Her second novel, Circe (2018), reimagined the Greek sorceress from Homer's Odyssey as a fully realized protagonist. The book won the Goodreads Choice Award for Fantasy in 2018, was shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction, and became a major global bestseller. Miller is recognized as a leading practitioner of mythological realism—the retelling of classical myths through modern literary sensibility—and her two novels have introduced Greek mythology to an entirely new generation of readers. She lives in Pennsylvania.