American · b. 1978
Madeline Miller retells Greek myth with fresh urgency. "The Song of Achilles" (2012) won the Orange Prize for its account of Achilles and Patroclus's love, told from Patroclus's perspective. "Circe" (2018) follows the witch-goddess from Homer's "Odyssey" through millennia of exile and transformation. Miller studied Classics at Brown and taught Latin and Greek before turning to fiction. Her novels succeed because she treats the myths as living material, not museum pieces.