Madeline Miller:
It came fairly late.
So the whole time I was a child, I was having, you know, these wonderful adventures in my mind for these gods and goddesses characters. And I eventually grew up and became a classicist and ended up studying it.
But it didn't really occur to me that I could sort of write my own version, that I could then adapt it myself, until actually theater. And I directed a production of "Troilus and Cressida," which is Shakespeare's version of "The Iliad."
And getting to work with that as a director, as a storyteller, for the first time, getting to shape how Cassandra or Helen or Achilles or Ajax were delivering their lines, how they were standing on the stage, how they were coming off, suddenly made me realize all these things that I have been wanting to say about these characters, yes, I do want to say them in an academic essay, but also I want to say them in a novel.
And I think that there's some things you can say in a novel with an emotional force that you can't necessarily get across in academic writing. And the story of Achilles and Patroclus and their love.
And then the story of Circe and her life as a woman and as a goddess and as a witch were examples of that.
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