Every novelist who works with ancient mythology eventually arrives at the same uncomfortable discovery: the sources disagree, they fall silent, or they compress into a few lines of poetry what would have taken days or weeks of human effort to accomplish. The Calydonian Boar Hunt presented me with those three problems, and the most instructive […]
On Ovid, Myth, and Historical Imagination There is a question every novelist must answer, if only to themselves: why this story, and why now? For me the answer arrived not gradually but all at once, in the final lines of a myth I had known for years without truly seeing. Ovid tells Atalanta‘s story across
Why a Novel About Atalanta? Read More »
On a clear summer night in the Northern Hemisphere, four constellations rise in sequence from the eastern horizon like old friends arriving at a long-awaited reunion. Gemini the Twins appears first, their bright stars Pollux and Castor burning side by side with the easy companionship of brothers. Cancer the Crab follows, small and subtle, easy
The Constellations of Atalanta: Myth, Astronomy, and the Night Sky of Ancient Greece Read More »
