Madeline Miller

Circe, Miller's second novel, was released on April 10, 2018. The book is told from the perspective of Circe, a character in the Odyssey. The summary of the novel is as follows:

I stole it from Plato! The idea that Patroclus and Achilles were lovers is quite old. Many Greco-Roman authors read their relationship as a romantic one—it was a common and accepted interpretation in the ancient world. We even have a fragment from a lost tragedy of Aeschylus, where Achilles speaks of his and Patroclus' 'frequent kisses.' There is a lot of support for their relationship in the text of the Iliad itself, though Homer never makes it explicit. For me, the most compelling piece of evidence, aside from the depth of Achilles' grief, is how he grieves: Achilles refuses to burn Patroclus' body, insisting instead on keeping the corpse in his tent, where he constantly weeps and embraces it—despite the horrified reactions of those around him. That sense of physical devastation spoke deeply to me of a true and total intimacy between the two men.

The Song of Achilles was the winner of the 17th annual Orange Prize for Fiction. Carolyn Kellogg of the Los Angeles Times wrote that it was a surprise win, with Miller being "the dark horse in this year's race". Joanna Trollope, chair of the judges, commented "This is a more than worthy winner – original, passionate, inventive and uplifting. Homer would be proud of her." The book was also shortlisted for the 2013 Chautauqua Prize.

The Song of Achilles, Miller's debut novel, was released in September 2011. The book took her ten years to write. After discarding a completed manuscript five years into her writing, she started again from scratch, struggling to perfect the voice of her narrator. The Song of Achilles, set in Greece, tells the story of a love affair between Achilles and Patroclus. Miller was inspired by the account of the two men from Homer's Iliad and said she wanted to explore who Patroclus was and what he meant to Achilles. On her inspiration for the novel, Miller explained:

Circe was ranked the second-greatest book of the 2010s in Paste. An 8-part miniseries adaptation of the book has been greenlit for HBO Max.

Madeline Miller (born July 24, 1978) is an American novelist, author of The Song of Achilles (2011) and Circe (2018). Miller spent ten years writing Song of Achilles while she worked as a Latin and Greek teacher. The novel tells the story of the love between the mythological figures Achilles and Patroclus; it won the Orange Prize for Fiction, making Miller the fourth debut novelist to win the prize. She is a 2019 recipient of the Alex Awards.

Miller was born on July 24, 1978, in Boston and grew up in New York City and Philadelphia. After graduating from Brown University with a bachelor's and master's in Classics (2000 and 2001, respectively), Miller then went on to teach Latin, Greek and Shakespeare to high school students. She also studied for a year at the University of Chicago's Committee on Social Thought toward a PhD and from 2009 to 2010 at the Yale School of Drama for an MFA in Dramaturgy and Dramatic Criticism. As of May 2012 Miller lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts teaching and writing.