Emily Wilson: Reading The Iliad, featuring Ben Shenkman and Morgan Spector

Emily Wilson spent nearly a decade wrestling with her translation of the great Homeric epic, The Iliad, which she calls, “the most gripping and heartbreaking work of literature I know.” The poem, she writes, “evokes human greatness and human vulnerability...even now, when I turn back to lines I have read hundreds of times already, I find that the raw power of the Greek still startles me.” Wilson reads from her translation (and perhaps some in the original Greek as well!), and discusses the clamor of arms, the bellowing boasts, the fury, and grief that define the thrilling, magical, and emotionally complex poem.

Actors Ben Shenkman and Morgan Spector will read selections from Wilson's translation.