I was so excited to see today that Emily Wilson got a “genius” grant from the MacArthur Foundation! Congratulations, Professor Wilson!
It’s $625,000, distributed over five years, to do anything you want with. Some people use it to leave their jobs and work on what they love, other people use it to put on a performance or pay to build a new laboratory. Some people give it to charity. You can’t apply for them – someone else has to choose you, and then they just call and tell you. She says she was just picking her kids up from school when she got the call!
A full list of MacArthur winners 2019
Emily Wilson is the first woman to publish a translation of Homer’s Odyssey from ancient Greek to English. And it’s by far my favorite translation too. I love how she used short, simple words. I love how she kept to the same number of lines as the original. It’s so great that she is brave enough to call a slave a slave and not a “servant” or a “maid” or an “assistant.” I love how much sympathy she has for the slaves, especially in the scene where Telemachus kills them. Read it for yourself! You can buy it here:
Professor Wilson has been working on a translation of the Iliad, to go with it. I bet it will be finished sooner than expected, now that she has the award! And I can’t wait to read it.
Want to know more? These are some of our articles about Homer:
Who was Homer?
What’s the Odyssey?
How about the Iliad?
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