Summoning Circe with Madeline Miller

This program was recorded and is available to watch online until Friday, May 19th. 

Click here to watch the recording.

Madeline Miller will discuss her journey in imagining one of the most (in)famous witches in literature, including her inspiration, research, and writing process. 

This program will be free and open to the public via Zoom. Visit ptlib.org/circe to register and receive the link for the program. An audience Q&A will follow the author's presentation. If you cannot participate online, you can join us at the library for a live viewing of the virtual program in the Multi-Purpose Room on the first floor of the library.

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. Madeline 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.

Her second novel, Circe, was an instant number 1 New York Times bestseller, and has been widely praised from NPR to People Magazine to the Washington Post. Novelist Ann Patchett called it “An epic spanning thousands of years that’s also a keep-you-up-all-night page turner.” In the house of Helios, god of the sun and mightiest of the Titans, a daughter is born. But Circe is a strange child—not powerful, like her father, nor viciously alluring like her mother. Turning to the world of mortals for companionship, she discovers that she does possess power—the power of witchcraft, which can transform rivals into monsters and menace the gods themselves. With unforgettably vivid characters, mesmerizing language and page-turning suspense, Circe is a triumph of storytelling, an intoxicating epic of family rivalry, palace intrigue, love and loss, as well as a celebration of indomitable female strength in a man’s world.

This event is part of PTPL's NEA BIG READ program. NEA Big Read is a program of the National Endowment for the Arts in partnership with Arts Midwest.