Keynote Speaker of Homer Day at University of Waterloo Explores Why Ancient Epic Still Matters
Jeff Wright, Keynote Speaker at the University of Waterloo's Homer Celebration Day.
WATERLOO, ON, CANADA, April 27, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ -- The University of Waterloo’s Department of Classical Studies welcomed storyteller, podcaster, and author Jeff Wright as keynote speaker for Homer Appreciation Day on April 24, where he explored why Homer’s Iliad continues to captivate modern audiences even as many first-time readers find the poem difficult to enter.
Drawing on more than two decades of live performance and podcast storytelling, Wright focused on what he calls the “classically curious” — general readers and listeners who are deeply interested in Greek epic, but who often arrive at Homer without the broader narrative framing his original audience could take for granted.
“I am not a Homer scholar,” Wright said in his keynote. “I’m a storyteller.”
Wright argued that modern readers do not need Homer simplified so much as contextualized. In his talk, he identified several recurring barriers for contemporary audiences: missing backstory, conflicting versions of the Trojan War tradition, uncertainty over whose version of the myth they are hearing, the unstable logic of gods and fate, and the moral distance between Homeric values and modern sensibilities.
“The classically curious are not lazy. They are not unintelligent,” Wright said. “They are under-briefed.”
That concern lies at the center of Wright’s forthcoming book, The Full Disclosure Iliad, which will be released on May 26, 2026, and is now available for pre-order. The book retells the Trojan War story from mythic origins through the Trojan Horse while openly disclosing the competing ancient sources, contradictions, and narrative choices behind the retelling.
During the keynote, Wright described his method as a two-part approach: tell the story clearly and decisively in the narrative itself, then step behind the curtain to explain alternate traditions, source tensions, and interpretive decisions in accompanying commentary. In his view, modern audiences are willing to engage Homer in all his strangeness and difficulty, provided they are given a guide who is transparent about the terrain.
“Modern audiences will follow Homer into his most difficult moral terrain if you give them an honest guide rather than a sanitized one,” Wright said.
Wright closed by framing scholars, teachers, and storytellers as engaged in a shared task: helping new audiences cross the threshold into ancient epic without flattening its complexity.
“The goal is the same,” he said. “To get people past the wall. To get them inside the story.”
Homer Appreciation Day, hosted by the University of Waterloo, brings together scholars and creative practitioners engaging the Homeric epics and their reception. Wright’s keynote formed part of that broader conversation while also pointing toward his continuing public-facing work on Greek epic and the upcoming release of The Full Disclosure Iliad.
About Jeff Wright
Jeff Wright is a storyteller, podcaster, and author of the forthcoming The Full Disclosure Iliad. For more than twenty years, he has brought Greek epic to public audiences through live performance and audio storytelling aimed at what he calls the “classically curious.”
Marie Bilodeau
Perfect Note Speakers
marie@perfectnotespeakers.com
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