Alex Miller lives in Melbourne with his wife and two children. The Sitters is his fourth novel.

His third novel, The Ancestor Game, won the 1993 Miles Franklin Award, the Commonwealth Writers Prize and the Barbara Ramsden Award.

This novel has been published to critical acclaim in the USA, and has been translated into Chinese. Alex is a Visiting Fellow at La Trobe University.

a narrow, vertical painting, tightly enclosing the scene. Her pale arm and pale thigh. Viewed at a diagonal through an exceedingly tall doorway...just a glimpse of something...

An aging portrait artist meets a woman who unsettles him, yet inspires him to paint her. Reluctantly, at first, they are drawn together.

The ambiguity of the relationship between painter and subject is revealed through Alex Miller's subtle, sensuous narrative. The artist must watch and wait to trap the shy beast. For the skill of portraiture is in seeing beyond the face, beyond the likeness.