Emily Wilson

Poet and translator Emily Wilson earned a BA in classics from Balliol College, University of Oxford; a MPhil in Renaissance English literature from Corpus Christi College, University of Oxford; and a PhD in classics and comparative literature from Yale University.

Wilson is the author of three poetry collections: The Great Medieval Yellows (Canarium Books, 2015); Micrographia (University of Iowa Press, 2009); and The Keep (University of Iowa Press, 2001). Her works in translation include Homer’s The Iliad (W. W. Norton, 2023) and Sophocles’s Oedipus Tyrannos (W. W. Norton, 2022). Her works of nonfiction include the biography The Greatest Empire: A Life of Seneca (Oxford University Press 2014). 

Wilson is a recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and the 2025 American Academy of Arts and Letters Award. She is is a professor and the department chair of classical studies at the University of Pennsylvania, holding the College for Women Class of 1963 Term Professor in the Humanities.