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 has published four books on ancient literature, philosophy and translation, an edited volume on tragedy, and many essays and articles, as well as verse translations of Seneca, Sophocles, Euripides and Homer. She lives in Philadelphia.
Follow Professor Wilson on Bluesky @EmilyRCWilson where she posts about Homer and translation.
Interviews and profiles of Professor Wilson:
Die Zeit (July 2026) “Wäre ich ein Mann, hätten sie weniger Probleme mit meinem Tonfall” Interview mit Titus Blome
The Daily, New York Times Podcast (July 2026) “What’s Epic about the ‘Odyssey?’ Everything.” With host Natalie Kitroeff and Madeline Miller [paywalled]
KQED San Francisco (July 2026) “Translating ‘The Odyssey’ for a Modern Audience” With host Rachael Myrow and Jackie Murray, associate professor in the Department of Classics, University of Buffalo
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 2023) “How a translation of ‘The Iliad’ into modern language reinforces its relevance” by Jeffrey Brown
BBC (October 2023) “The Iliad: How modern readers get this epic wrong” by Natalie Haynes
CNN (September 2023) “An Epic Translation for a Modern Audience” on The Assignment with Audie Cornish
Esquire (September 2023) “Emily Wilson Wants to Make You Cry” By Nick Hilden
Literary Hub (September 2023) “Enduring Epics: Emily Wilson and Madeline Miller on Breathing New Life Into Ancient Classics” a conversation with Madeline Miller
The Guardian (September 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 2023) “Mother Tongue” by Judith Thurman
2020 Guggenheim Fellow profile (April 2020) John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation
2019 MacArthur Fellow profile (September 2019) by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
New York Times Magazine (November 2017) “The First Woman to Translate the ‘Odyssey’ Into English“ by Wyatt Mason