Kirsten Miller believes there are witches among us. Not the witches that ride around on broomsticks and wear pointy hats but those of a more human variety: women who give off what she calls powerful "witchy vibes" -- the kind of women Miller likes to write about.
"You can just feel a witch," Miller says over Zoom from her apartment in Park Slope, Brooklyn, which she shares with her 16-year-old daughter and polydactyl cat. "It's not someone who casts spells; it's someone with an innate sense of power. I'm a big believer in energy. I feel that when you're in the presence of someone who has power that comes from the soul, rather than from money or anything else, you know it."
Miller's books abound with witch-women who are agents of positive change in the world -- and who sometimes engage in vigilante justice. "If Marvel can create a world filled with superheroes," she says, "I can create a universe filled with middle-aged witches who go out and kick bad-guy ass."
She sets her novels in worlds that are often off-kilter and magical, yet familiar, where strong female characters carry the day. She's written a number of YA books, including the Kiki Strike series and the Nightmares! series, which she cowrote with actor Jason Segel, as well as two adult novels: The Change, a Good Morning America Book Club pick about women who develop mystical powers when they hit menopause, and Lula Dean's Little Library of Banned Books, a satire about censorship. Miller's adult novels have sold approximately 200,000 copies to date, according to her publisher, William Morrow, and her works have been translated into 24 languages.
The author's third adult novel, The Women of Wild Hill, out in October, is a multigenerational story about a family of witches, the Duncans, who use their powers to fight against the patriarchy and rid the planet of evil -- one crooked politician and billionaire at a time. "I love this idea of a family who understand that there's something special in the blood that flows through their veins," Miller says. She hopes her book will inspire women to feel their own power. "We are the most powerful generation of women in the history of the world. It's mind-boggling, over the past 100 years we've gone from a group of people who didn't have many rights, who weren't able to own property or support ourselves, or have rights over our reproductive systems, to becoming more financially, politically, and culturally important than any women who've ever lived. I don't think a lot of us even recognize how powerful we've become."
Raised in Sylva, N.C., in the Blue Ridge Mountains, Miller attended a school on a Cherokee reservation, where her father was a teacher, until she was in the third grade. "I was always a strange kid," she says. "Always interested in the paranormal."
When she was young, her parents bought a house they later learned might be haunted, and Miller says she saw the ghost of the previous owner in her bedroom. "There was a man standing next to my bureau," she remembers. "I can see him to this day." She's been open to all things otherworldly ever since. "I've always been fascinated by what we in our culture consider this dichotomy between science and magic. To me, magic is science that we don't understand yet."
Growing up, Miller knew she didn't belong in Sylva. "Living in a small Southern town is like living in a fish bowl," she says. She moved to New York City as a teen, earned a degree in literature from Barnard College in 1994, and worked in advertising for 20-plus years while writing YA books before releasing The Change, which tackles ageism and sexism.
In 2021, while finishing The Change -- which is currently in development as a TV series -- Miller bought a house in the Hudson Valley, but it burned down less than a year after she and her daughter moved in, the result of an electrical fire. "It was absolutely a sign!" Miller says. She promptly moved back to the city, and has no plans to leave ever again. "New York City has always been my muse. It's the greatest love of my life."
Suzanne Gluck, Miller's agent at WME, has been with Miller for 20 years and has watched the author's career bloom. "Kirsten is a warrior," Gluck says. "When she came to me, with her first Kiki Strike book, I felt like Caleb Carr had been resurrected as a young woman."
The Women of Wild Hill is all about celebrating female power. It revolves around three members of the Duncan family -- estranged sisters Brigid and Phoebe, who possess magical abilities (one can see how people will die, the other communicates with animals), and Phoebe's daughter, Sibyl -- and is set at Wild Hill, a property that's been in their family for generations, located in Mattauk, on Long Island. The women are summoned to Wild Hill by the Old One, a goddess-like entity who's displeased with how the planet is being treated by those in power and who wants the Duncans to set things right by any means necessary. Mattauk, it turns out, is a playground for the wealthy and influential -- and the perfect place to pick off misogynistic politicians, billionaires, technocrats, and public relations fixers who cover up crimes. The Duncans must figure out how to tap into their abilities to take down the world's nefarious forces and fulfill their destinies.
Rachel Kahan, Miller's editor, highlights the author's ability to examine our culture in unexpected ways. "Kirsten's superpower," Kahan says, "is that she can look at the crazy things that are happening in society and write novels that offer stark social commentary, but that are also wildly entertaining."
Miller describes herself as incredibly impatient. "I can barely sit still long enough to get my hair done," she says. "I'm always desperate to get started with a book." She's already writing her next, which will tackle the manosphere and trad-wife culture. Her bedroom wall is covered in note cards and sticky notes, which she's using to plot out the story -- one she hopes will resonate with readers. "One of my goals as a writer is to shake women like me awake and tell them, look at your life, look how powerful you are, go out and do something with that."
Like some of the magical characters in her novels, Miller has a green thumb (it's among her witchy powers, she remarks) and a deep connection to nature. When she needs a break from writing, she heads to Prospect Park, where she works as a volunteer, tearing out harmful, invasive weeds. It's a metaphor for what she does in her fiction. "It's wish fulfillment for me, to take on the bad guys that I feel need to be taken on and dispatch them in horrible ways," she says. "It's cathartic. I have a good time."