Amidst the rolling anxious hum of the rest of the country biting their nails over the election on Tuesday, Nov. 5, the University of New Hampshire Classics Department and UNH’s Reading the Rainbow book club collaboratively hosted a Q&A session with best-selling author Madeline Miller, at 6:30 pm that night.

Reading the Rainbow, a UNH book club founded in 2021, meets monthly and is “dedicated to reading queer and BIPOC literature,” says club co-president Emma McGuire, who jointly moderated the event. This book club recently discussed Miller’s 2018 novel “Circe”.

Circe is the name of a goddess-witch who, in Homer’s ancient poem The Odyssey, takes Odysseus and the crew of his ship hostage, turns his crew into pigs, and of course, falls in love with Odysseus as she tries to keep him from returning to his home far away in Ithaca. Madeline Miller’s novel Circe retells this story from Circe’s perspective.

There were 52 attendees to the Q&A session on Zoom, with more watching live on YouTube and attending the event at UNH’s Memorial Union Building’s Theater, to which Miller called in via Zoom.

Reading the Rainbow’s weekly meetings usually hosts around 50 attendees, according to McGuire. Collaborating with the Classics Dept. “was great because we saw new people we haven’t seen before, who are joining now,” said Emma Schmidl-Gagne, club co-president.

The event was split into two sections: the first part was moderated by the Reading the Rainbow book club and the second part was moderated by the Classics Deptartment. It was noted at the beginning that the Q&A session corresponded with election day in the U.S. but following that, no other mention of national events was made. Attendees peppered Miller with thoughtful questions, to which she responded in detail. Schmidl-Gagne stressed that Reading the Rainbow encouraged all their members to vote—part of the reason why they scheduled the Q&A for the evening. However, “my hope was for [the Q&A] to be a little distraction away from the chaos that is the election,” she said.

Before Miller started answering questions about—for example—her “extremely messy” writing process, or about epic epithets in contemporary characterization, or about which language was her favorite, Latin or Greek (she good-naturedly refused to pick a favorite), Miller took the time to recognize the value of a club dedicated to reading queer and BIPOC literature. “I wish that my college would have had a club like Reading the Rainbow when I was there,” she said.

Miller said she attended Brown University because her high school Latin teacher—whom she cites as being the catalyst for her career as a Classics teacher—told her that, in his opinion, the best Virgil scholar, Michael Putnam, worked at Brown.

“I also love the alliance,” continued Miller, referring to the collaboration between the Reading the Rainbow book club and the Classics Dept. She noted later that this collaboration is particularly inspiring in part because of the “history of white supremacy in classics” and the history of elitism in the field.

Many modern classicists are seeking to reckon with this fraught history and make classics more inclusive, which is part of the reason she wrote a popular novel about a female character in Greek myth, said Miller.

Her first attraction to classics was “not the magical stuff […] but the incredibly big human emotions” depicted in these ancient stories, said Miller. She said she tried to capture those emotions in her novels and share the stories in a way that might get a new generation excited about studying classics.

Miller also noted that there is so much ancient literature that has been lost in time. “When we’re looking at the ancient world, we’re looking through a pinhole,” she said. This can be seen as an advantage—it allows the creative writer more freedom in thinking up worlds of their own invention—but also as a disadvantage. “I really wish we had all of Sappho,” Miller mused.

Organizing the Q&A with Madeline Miller, whose novel “Circe” was a No. 1 New York Times Bestseller, required funding and fundraising. Last year Reading the Rainbow put together a book sale at the Memorial Union Building, says club co-president McGuire. They left boxes around campus for people to donate books, then sorted these books and sold them, earning around a thousand dollars.

Reading the Rainbow also receives funding from UNH’s SAFC, or Student Activity Fee Committee, an organization that “provides funding to the 200+ student organizations at the University of New Hampshire,” according to UNH’s website. UNH’s Classics Dept. also contributed to the funding.

Reading the Rainbow’s co-presidents said they are planning to put on another book sale next semester, as they are always in need of funds for events and club materials. The club makes it a point to always provide the books they discuss for free, they said.
Now, the results of the presidential election have been decided. UNH’s Reading the Rainbow and the Classics Department continue to be spaces where literature is enthusiastically discussed. As Madeline Miller said—embodying this enthusiasm— “I love ancient similes […] they’re always on my mind.”