Madeline Miller holds a degree in Classics from Brown University and taught Latin and Greek before turning to fiction. Her debut, The Song of Achilles, won the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2012. Circe, her second novel, retells the story of the mythological sorceress from Homer's Odyssey and was shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2019, selected as a book of the year by outlets including the Guardian, Time, and the Washington Post, and became a New York Times number one bestseller.