Homer in the 21st Century: Creative Writing Competition

This competition has now concluded.

The 2026 Epic Threads Creative Writing Competition formed part of the journal’s call for submissions for Volume II. The competition welcomed original work engaging with antiquity, broadly defined, and encouraged submissions from students, early-career scholars, independent writers, and members of the wider public.

At its core, Epic Threads is a project of imagination grounded in scholarship. We believe that the ancient world, from Greece and Rome to the ancient Near East and beyond, is not a relic to be preserved behind glass, but a living landscape of human stories that remain relevant, complex, and capable of speaking to the present.

Through creative re-engagement, the competition invited writers and artists to draw the past into the present through fiction, poetry, dramatic writing, creative nonfiction, visual art, and experimental or hybrid forms.

Volume II also featured a thematic section devoted to Homer, with special recognition given to submissions that creatively reimagined the Iliad, the Odyssey, and the broader Homeric tradition.

Competition Overview

Eligible submissions were required to engage meaningfully with antiquity and to be grounded in historical, literary, archaeological, or material evidence, even where the past was creatively reimagined.

Authors were invited to submit work of up to 4,000 words and could include a short preface or afterword discussing the historical grounding, interpretive choices, or creative process behind their submission.

All historical sources and references were expected to be appropriately cited, and submissions were required to be previously unpublished and entirely original. AI-generated submissions were not permitted.

All contest submissions were also considered for publication in Epic Threads. Authors whose work was selected for publication entered a collaborative revision and editing process with the journal’s editorial team.

Contest and Prize Structure

The submission deadline for contest eligibility was April 17, 2026, at 11:59 PM Eastern Time. Winners were announced during Homer Appreciation Day at the University of Waterloo on April 24, 2026.

Epic Threads is grateful to the Department of Classical Studies and the Shalom Trust at the University of Waterloo for supporting the competition prizes.

The competition recognized excellence in the following areas:

  • Best Homeric Piece
  • Best University of Waterloo Student Piece
  • Best General Submission
  • Homer Appreciation Day Creative Story Competition

2026 Prize Winners

The editorial team was delighted by the quality, originality, and range of the submissions received. The winning works demonstrated exceptional literary or artistic craft, meaningful engagement with historical and literary evidence, and imaginative approaches to bringing the ancient and medieval worlds into dialogue with the present.

Best Homeric Piece

First Place

Spring in the Wind-Bag
Jingnan Wang

A delicate and inventive reinterpretation of the Odyssey, this poem transforms Aeolus’ wind-bag into a modern symbol of suspended longing. Through restrained, lyrical language, it explores memory, delay, and the quiet persistence of hope, reimagining nostos not simply as return, but as a state of continued movement.

Read Spring in the Wind-Bag →

Second Place

The Curse of Pigs
Nikkita Snelleksz

This powerful poetic re-voicing centers Circe’s emotional world after Odysseus’ departure. Drawing on Homeric tradition and modern interpretations of gender and abjection, the piece explores desire, rejection, power, and the emotional consequences that remain concealed beneath the surface of myth.

Read The Curse of Pigs →

Best University of Waterloo Student Piece

First Place

Hymn to Freyr
Jerome Sagot

Blending Homeric structure with Norse mythology, this ambitious composition reimagines the ancient hymn tradition through the figure of Freyr. Rich in poetic technique, linguistic experimentation, and scholarly engagement, it places Greek and Norse religious traditions into a thoughtful and imaginative conversation.

Read Hymn to Freyr →

Second Place

Portrait of an Ideal Ptolemaic Queen
Eleanor McCrimmon

This visually and historically grounded work reconstructs the image of an ideal Ptolemaic queen by combining Greek and Egyptian artistic traditions. Through carefully selected symbols of divinity, fertility, royal legitimacy, and cultural identity, the portrait explores the complex visual language of female power in the Hellenistic world.

View Portrait of an Ideal Ptolemaic Queen →

Best General Submission

First Place

A Week in My Life as Hrotsvitha von Gandersheim
Madeline Howard

This richly layered and stylistically inventive narrative braids the voice of a modern researcher with that of the medieval writer Hrotsvitha von Gandersheim. Blending scholarship, humour, linguistic reflection, and creative storytelling, it explores authorship, identity, historiography, and the recovery of women’s voices across time.

Read A Week in My Life as Hrotsvitha von Gandersheim →

Second Place

The Saviour
Angus Jacobson

Set within the Hellenistic world, this thoughtful narrative examines kingship, artistic representation, political authority, and the creation of heroic legacy. Through an encounter between Antiochus I and a painter, it questions how rulers shape public memory and how history transforms complicated human lives into myth.

Read The Saviour →

Special Recognition

Special Prize

Thirty Eight
Kate Cofell

Thirty Eight received special recognition after placing highly across more than one judging category. Through its distinctive voice, historical grounding, and imaginative portrayal of the ancient world, the piece demonstrated strengths that merited additional acknowledgement from the judging panel.

Read Thirty Eight →

Homer Appreciation Day Creative Story Competition

A separate collaborative story-development competition was held during Homer Appreciation Day. Participants worked in groups to develop an original Homer-inspired plot outline and a compelling “back-of-the-book” teaser.

Winning Group

  • Ivana Petrovic
  • William LaMonica-Sleczkowski
  • Luisa Coskun

Runner-Up Group

  • Kate Cofell
  • Mica Rothlisberger

Homer Appreciation Day

Homer Appreciation Day was held on Friday, April 24, 2026, in the Dragen Lab at St. Jerome’s University College, University of Waterloo, with portions of the program also accessible online.

The full-day event explored the enduring power, adaptability, and cultural afterlife of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. It brought together scholars, writers, students, storytellers, and members of the public for academic presentations, performances, creative activities, and interdisciplinary discussion.

View the Homer Appreciation Day Program and Recordings →

About the Judging Process

Written submissions were evaluated according to three principal criteria:

  • Overall Strength: originality, narrative or conceptual interest, structure, and impact
  • Writing or Artistic Quality: style, clarity, technique, presentation, and control of form
  • Historical Transformation: the effectiveness with which historical, literary, or material evidence was incorporated and creatively transformed

The final results were determined through careful reading, scoring, comparison, and discussion. The awards were distributed to recognize the distinct strengths of multiple submissions rather than allowing one work to receive prizes in several categories.

Congratulations to Our Contributors

We extend our sincere congratulations to all prize winners, runners-up, workshop participants, and authors who submitted their work to the competition.

Together, these submissions demonstrate the continued vitality of creative engagement with the ancient and medieval worlds and exemplify the mission of Epic Threads: to unite historical inquiry, literary craft, and imaginative reinterpretation.

Additional pieces from the competition and the wider Volume II call for submissions will be published as they complete the journal’s collaborative editorial process.

Explore Current and Past Epic Threads Competitions →

For questions, please contact the editorial team at epicthreadsjournal@gmail.com.