Madeline Miller was born in Boston and grew up in New York City and Philadelphia. She attended Brown University, where she earned her BA and MA in Classics. She has taught and tutored Latin, Greek and Shakespeare to high school students for more than fifteen years.She has also studied at the University of Chicago’s Committee on Social Thought, and in the Dramaturgy department at Yale School of Drama, where she focused on the adaptation of classical texts to modern forms.
The Song of Achilles, her first novel, was awarded the 2012 Orange Prize for Fiction and was a New York Times bestseller. It has been translated into over twenty-five languages including Dutch, Mandarin, Japanese, Turkish, Arabic and Greek. Miller was also shortlisted for the 2012 Stonewall Writer of the Year, and her essays have appeared in a number of publications including the Guardian, Wall Street Journal, Lapham's Quarterly and NPR.org.
Miller's second novel, Circe, was an instant #1 New York Times bestseller.
From her response to prompts at the Guardian:
The books that changed my lifeVisit Madeline Miller's website.
There are many. Homer’s The Iliad and The Odyssey are the obvious answers. Virgil’s Aeneid was so profound and exciting it moved me from nerdy enthusiasm to actual classical scholarship. Isabel Allende’s The House of the Spirits showed me that books can fill you with both rage and awe. Lorrie Moore’s witty precision made me want to be a writer. And Shakespeare: directing his plays taught me so much of what I know about storytelling.
The book I wish I’d written
Books are too personal to be able to swap writers, I think. Still, Lily King’s Father of the Rain.
The book that is most overrated
I usually have...[read on]
See Madeline Miller's top ten classical books.
My Book, The Movie: The Song of Achilles.
Writers Read: Madeline Miller (May 2018).
--Marshal Zeringue