Photo by Kyle Cassidy
About Emily Wilson
Emily Wilson is Department Chair and Professor of Classical Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, holding the College for Women Class of 1963 Term Professor in the Humanities. Wilson attended Oxford University (Balliol College B.A. in Classics and Corpus Christi College M.Phil. in Renaissance English Literature) and Yale University (Ph.D. in Classics and Comparative Literature). She has been named a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome in Renaissance & Early Modern scholarship, a MacArthur Fellow, and a Guggenheim Fellow. She lives in Philadelphia with her family and pets.
Follow Professor Wilson on Substack @EmilyRCWilson. Professor Wilson frequently posts about Homer and translation.
Interviews and profiles of Professor Wilson:
Hay Festival Book Club (August 2024) “Homer’s The Odyssey translated by Emily Wilson” In conversation with Kamila Shamsie, author of Best of Friends and Home Fire, a contemporary reimagining of Sophocles' Antigone
PBS (October 16, 2023) “How a translation of ‘The Iliad’ into modern language reinforces its relevance” by Jeffrey Brown
BBC (October 4, 2023) “The Iliad: How modern readers get this epic wrong” by Natalie Haynes
CNN (September 28, 2023) “An Epic Translation for a Modern Audience” on The Assignment with Audie Cornish
Esquire (September 27, 2023) “Emily Wilson Wants to Make You Cry” By Nick Hilden
Literary Hub (September 26, 2023) “Enduring Epics: Emily Wilson and Madeline Miller on Breathing New Life Into Ancient Classics” a conversation with Madeline Miller
The Guardian (September 9, 2023) “‘The Iliad may be ancient – but it’s not far away’: Emily Wilson on Homer’s blood-soaked epic” by Charlotte Higgins
The New Yorker (September 18, 2023) “Mother Tongue” by Judith Thurman
2020 Guggenheim Fellow profile (April 9, 2020) John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation
2019 MacArthur Fellow profile (September 25, 2019) by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
New York Times Magazine (November 2, 2017) “The First Woman to Translate the ‘Odyssey’ Into English“ by Wyatt Mason