Madeline Miller

Madeline Miller is an American novelist whose work brings Greek myth into modern fiction with patience, intimacy, and close attention to voice. She was born on July 24, 1978, in Boston, and grew up in New York City and Philadelphia. Her books belong to a contemporary moment in which ancient stories are often retold from overlooked points of view, but her connection to the material began early. Her mother, a librarian, started reading her The Iliad when Miller was five, and Miller began learning Latin at 11.

As a child on the Upper East Side, Miller spent time at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and was drawn to Greek mythology. One favorite object there was a marble statue of a wounded Amazon warrior, marked with drops of blood at the side of her breast. She later studied classics at Brown University, completing a bachelor’s degree in 2000 and a master’s degree in 2001. During the final year of her undergraduate studies, after codirecting a production of Troilus and Cressida, she began the novel that would become The Song of Achilles. The scene showing Patroclus’ death sparked her interest in telling his story.

Miller spent ten years writing The Song of Achilles while working as a teacher of Latin and Greek. She also taught Shakespeare to high school students. Published in September 2011, the novel is set during the Greek Heroic Age and tells the story of the bond between Achilles and Patroclus from Patroclus’ point of view. It won the 17th annual Orange Prize for Fiction, making Miller the fourth debut novelist to win the prize. The book was also a New York Times bestseller, a Stonewall Honor Book of the American Library Association, and a finalist or shortlisted title for several other awards.

Her second novel, Circe, was released on April 10, 2018. It retells the story of Circe, the enchantress from Greek mythology who appears in Homer’s Odyssey, but gives her the center of the book rather than treating her as a figure in Odysseus’ tale. Miller said she was motivated in part by disappointment with Circe’s role in the Odyssey, explaining that Odysseus had told his story for 3,000 years and that it was time for Circe to speak for herself. The novel became a #1 New York Times bestseller and a #1 Indie bestseller. An eight-part miniseries adaptation was green-lit for HBO Max, with Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver set to write and produce it.

Miller’s fiction is known as mythological realism. She has described genre as “permeable and changeable,” and her work reimagines Greek myth while focusing on experiences such as dysfunctional families and homesickness. She later published Galatea, first released as an e-book in 2013 and then in hardback in March 2022, and Heracles’ Bow, a short story included in a Waterstones special edition of The Song of Achilles in 2012. In December 2021, she announced work on a novel about Persephone, and in January 2026 she announced a short story about Mestra. Miller received an Alex Award in 2019. Her writing continues to draw readers because she asks old stories to speak again, often through figures who were once left at the edge of the page.