Dr Madeleine Muller

Madeleine is a South African medical doctor, currently working as a family physician in a large regional public sector hospital in Mdantsane, South Africa. She lives with her husband and two daughters, age 16 and 13, on a small-holding in a beautiful, rural sea-side village on the East Coast.

Although medicine has been her passion her whole adult life, when she was at school she wanted to study performance art, and even went to an art school, specialising in Speech & Drama. At the last minute she changed to science and went to medical school, but has kept her love for theatre, teaching and writing throughout her life.

Performance art has found its way into her career and she is employed as a senior lecturer at the Family Medicine department of WSU, the medical school in East London. She is a keen advocate for rural health and has a YouTube channel with training videos (her own and others) for doctors in rural health care settings. Inspirations from her work and from rural living in the Eastern Cape have found their way into her books.

When her first born was 3 years old she wrote her first picture book, with her mom-in-law illustrating. This soon became a yearly tradition for both her children’s birthdays and by the time her daughter was 10 a “chapter book” was requested. As a result she had to produce at least two novellas a year to keep them happy.

In 2018 she joined a creative writing group, which upped her skills and gave her the support and encouragement to publish some of her work. Her daughter, who was now 15 years old and a keen artist, convinced her to “up her game” and write a superhero action novel.

And so her first official publication, Runnin’ on the Flats, was born, illustrated by her daughter, Coral Muller. This has been followed by Dimbaza Divine; and a novel, On the rocks at Mdumbi and finally Superheroes in Sterkstroom.