Drawing together an interdisciplinary range of scholarly and creative voices, this volume looks at contemporary discussions surrounding women’s engagement with the classical past. There is a discussion as to why classical creative retellings are so popular now, as well as considerations of what creativity can do to foster new ways of thinking and writing about classics, thus blurring the boundary between the creative and the critical. In particular, the contributors engage with debates on how to make classics more accessible through the medium of creative works, so that it is not just a discipline for the selective few.
The inclusion of original creative work by women writers – such as poems by Katie Byford and Carrie Etter, and interviews with Madeline Miller and Kamila Shamsie – foregrounds new voices that have previously been excluded or overlooked by classical academia. As a result, this cutting-edge collaboration between practitioners and researchers offers new insights into issues on equality, diversity and inclusivity, all which point forward towards a ‘new’ classics.