Celebrate Books That Live with internationally renowned author Neil Gaiman and pioneering scholar and translator Emily Wilson, in a conversation moderated by acclaimed writer and translator Maria Dahvana Headley. This event, part of The Cooper Union’s Gardiner Foundation Great Hall Forum series, marks the centenary of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., the nation’s largest independent, employee-owned book publisher. Norton traces its origins straight to The Cooper Union’s Great Hall, where, in 1923, William Warder Norton and Mary Dows Herter Norton resolved to publish lectures by leading intellectuals who appeared onstage in a free Sunday series from the People’s Institute. Tonight’s program brings to life the spirit that inspired the Nortons and explores books that exemplify the firm’s motto, Books That Live: timeless myths and epics from preeminent storytellers and translators. The event also celebrates the release of Wilson’s much-anticipated translation of Homer’s Iliad and features a special limited-edition hardcover of Gaiman’s acclaimed Norse Mythology. Signed copies of both books (Norton), as well as Headley’s Beowulf (FSG), will be available for sale at the event by The Strand.

Registration required. Please note this free event is first-come-first-served, and an RSVP does not guarantee admission.

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Neil Gaiman is the author of such diverse New York Times bestsellers as Norse Mythology, Coraline, The Ocean at the End of the Lane, The Graveyard Book, and American Gods. He is the recipient of the Newbery and Carnegie Medals, and many Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, and Will Eisner Awards. Gaiman has adapted many of his works to television series, including Good Omens and The Sandman. He is a Goodwill Ambassador for the UN Refugee Agency UNHCR and Professor in the Arts at Bard College.

Emily Wilson is the College for Women Class of 1963 Term Professor in the Humanities and a professor of classical studies at the University of Pennsylvania. She has been named a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome in Renaissance and Early Modern scholarship, a MacArthur Fellow, and a Guggenheim Fellow. Her best-selling 2017 translation of Homer’s Odyssey has achieved “canonical status,” according to the Atlantic and the Washington Post. Wilson’s translation of The Iliad has just been released by Norton. In addition, she has also published translations of Sophocles, Euripides, and Seneca, as well as books about tragedy, Socrates, and Seneca, and serves as an editor of The Norton Anthology of World Literature.

Maria Dahvana Headley is the New York Times best-selling, World Fantasy Award–winning author of eight books, most recently Beowulf: A New Translation, which won a Harold Morton Landon Translation Award from the Academy of American Poets, and a Hugo Award for Best Related Work. Her adaptation of Vergil’s Aeneid into a full-cast episodic musical was released in 2023 by Audible. Her work has been supported by Casa Ecco, the MacDowell Colony, and Arte Studio Ginestrelle, among others. She’s co-editor of Unnatural Creatures with Neil Gaiman, and is currently at work on a novel about queer mythology, volcanoes, and time-traveling book thieves, among other projects.