Melinda Rooney

Melinda Rooney has recently been wondering about stories: how we all tell them, how they tell us, and how storytellers long dead still speak so eloquently to the living. Who were the first storytellers? What were the first stories? How have they changed over time, and how have they remained the same? How have they shaped us?

Melinda has written and published fiction all her life.

She has been teaching for over thirty years. She’s taught children, college students, and adults at University School of Milwaukee, Carthage College in Wisconsin, and the Newberry Library in Chicago.

Her particular interest and area of expertise are in some of civilizations’ oldest stories: Greek Mythology, Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey and Homeric Hymns, and the tragedies of Sophocles, Aeschylus and Euripides.

Melinda’s most recent courses include seminars on Emily Wilson’s translation of The Odyssey and Caroline Alexander’s translation of Iliad.