Monstrous Interviews

  • Adapting Ancient Myth: “HANGRY HARPIES”

    We here at The Ancient Monsters Blog recently had an exciting opportunity: the chance to discuss the development of an upcoming television series, Hangry Harpies. Our guests are Rebecca Lauren, Creator/Producer/Actor, and Meredith Ginsburg, Director of the pilot episode. The mythological Harpies are best known from the story of Jason and the Argonauts, in which……

  • Teaching Ancient Monsters

    Today’s guest, Dr. Anactoria Clarke, is on the Regional Academic Staff of The Open University, UK, where she is a Staff Tutor in English Literature. Dr. Clarke has not one but two PhDs, the first in English Literature and the second in Classics!

  • Charybdis, Science Fiction, and the Nature of Realities

    Today’s guest is Ryan Denson, currently Assistant Professor at the University of Silesia in Katowice, Poland. He has previously written in depth on Charybdis’ eerie nature in a 2023 article for the interdisciplinary journal Preternature entitled “Monstrous Disembodiment and Ontological Uncertainty in Charybdis.”

  • Working on Egyptian monsters

    Today we’re speaking with Leanna Boychenko, Associate Professor of Classical Studies at Loyola University Chicago. One of her main interests is Ptolemaic Egypt and the cultural and literary connections between Egypt and Greece. She has written a chapter entitled “Spawned from the Nile: Egyptian Monsters in Graeco-Roman Culture” for The Oxford Handbook of Monsters in…

  • Ancient Sea Monsters

    Today’s guests are Camilla Asplund Ingemark and Dominic Ingemark, co-authors of several works about why ancient societies told stories about monsters. Their book Representations of Fear: Verbalising Emotion in Ancient Roman Folk Narrative (2020) explains how the act of narrating stories about monsters and other threats helps us to make sense of our lives and…