Annelise Gray

About Author

Author Annelise Gray introduces her fantasy adventure, The Odyssey of Phoebe Quilliam, which draws on Homer's The Odyssey to explore myths, memories and home.

Annelise was born in Bermuda and moved to the UK as a child. She grew up riding horses and dreaming of becoming a writer. After gaining a PhD in Classics from Cambridge, she worked as a researcher for authors and TV companies on topics as varied as Helen of Troy, Russian princesses and the history of Labradors.

She has also written the Circus Maximus series about life in Ancient Rome. Annelise lives in Dorset, where she teaches Latin.

Interview

September 2025

Annelise Gray draws on Ancient Greek mythology in The Odyssey of Phoebe Quilliam (Zephyr Books)

Author Annelise Gray talks to ReadingZone about drawing on ancient Greek myths and legends in Homer's The Odyssey to write her new adventure, The Odyssey of Phoebe Quilliam. Aimed at readers aged nine years plus, Gray's novel follows Phoebe when she is drawn back in time, to the world of The Odyssey, where she confronts monsters, conquers her fears, and discovers what 'home' really means to her.

Read a chapter from The Odyssey of Phoebe Quilliam

Review: "Engaging from the first page, The Odyssey of Phoebe Quilliam combines a thrilling adventure story with the poignant worries of a child coping with dementia in a loved one."

Q&A with Annalise Gray: exploring memories, myths and monsters in The Odyssey of Phoebe Quilliam

"Children love Greek myths because they're dark and dangerous and unsettling, and we're drawn back
to revisit them as we get older because we find new meaning in them."

1. Can you tell us a little about yourself as a writer, how you started writing for young people, and the kinds of books you enjoy writing? Do you also do other kinds of work?

Becoming a writer has been my ambition since I was old enough to hide in a corner with a book (which I used to do a lot). My first book - a history of the women of ancient Rome - was published in 2010. Truthfully though, I felt like I was pretending to be somebody else when I wrote that, proud though I am of the work that went into it.

When it occurred to me to try and write the kind of story I'd loved when I was young, it felt completely different, like I was writing as me. I started my first children's manuscript in 2015 and six years later it was published as Race to the Death, the opener to my Circus Maximus series about a young, horse-mad girl dreaming of becoming a charioteer in ancient Rome. With that book, as with all the others I've written, I wanted to write something that felt like the classic adventure stories I've always loved to read - full of action and jeopardy, keeping you turning the pages fast and really rooting for everything to come out OK for the characters.

When I'm not writing, I work as a Classics teacher and so far, all of my books have been inspired by the history and legends of ancient Greece and Rome. That could change one day! - but those stories really fuel my imagination.

2. What happens in your new book, The Odyssey of Phoebe Quilliam, and how you've drawn on these legends for Phoebe's adventures?

The Odyssey of Phoebe Quilliam is an adventure story inspired by the legend of the Greek hero Odysseus, and it's about a young girl facing down monsters - some of them ones she's carrying around in her heart without realising it.

Phoebe's dream is to become an artist like her grandmother, Cass, a brilliant storyteller who has passed on her love of Greek myths to Phoebe. But Cass is disappearing before Phoebe's eyes, lost to a cruel illness that is destroying her memory. When strange magic whisks a grieving Phoebe away to a fantasy world, she is caught up in a young boy's mission to find his long-lost father - a shipbuilder to King Odysseus, last seen going off to fight in the Trojan War.

At the same time, Phoebe faces her own epic quest - to seek out a shape-shifting monster with a ravenous and growing power. Only by defeating this creature, and facing the demons inside of her, will she have any hope of finding her way home and back to Cass.

3. What inspired this fantasy about a girl on an odyssey, and why did you want to focus on Phoebe's relationship with her grandmother through the novel?

I had the idea for Phoebe's story even before I started writing the Circus Maximus books - or at least, I had a picture in my mind of a book about a girl going through a portal of some kind into a world of Greek myth. The inspiration came from my own childhood love of those myths and also of portal stories like The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and the movie Labyrinth.

Gradually, Phoebe's relationship with her grandmother emerged as a key thread, which was partly a tribute to my own grandmother, to whom I was very close and of whom there is definitely a little bit in Cass.

4. You draw on Homer's The Odyssey for Phoebe's adventures; does this reflect your own love of Greek mythology from childhood? What draws storytellers to revisiting these ancient tales?

I had a collection of myths which I read over and over as a child - it was called the D'Aulaire's Book of Greek Myths and it was full of these colourful and sometimes comical lithograph illustrations, some of which I still think of when I'm imagining a particular mythological character.

It's true that the Greek myths never seem to get old. For me, that's probably because they're among the greatest adventure stories ever told. Children love the Greek myths because they're dark and dangerous and unsettling, and we're drawn back to revisit them as we get older because we find new meaning in them.

When I first read Homer's Odyssey, I was at university, studying Classics and we were focusing on the most famous section of the poem, which reads almost like a fantasy interlude where Odysseus is describing his encounters with creatures like the Cyclops and the Sirens and Scylla and Charybdis, all of whom thwart his journey back home from war. For a long time, the monsters dominated my impression of the Odyssey and its themes. Eventually, though, I understood that the Odyssey is really about homecoming. Not just getting back to the place you live but getting back to the place where people know you and where you know yourself (and where the monsters can't get to you so easily).

I would absolutely LOVE it if my readers were inspired to go and seek out some more Greek myths after reading about Phoebe's journey, especially the Odyssey. I've recommended a couple of retellings for children in my answer to question 7 below, as I probably wouldn't go for the full-fat Homeric version until they're a bit older.

5. Epic poems like The Odyssey focus on heroes and their quests. How have you used Phoebe's odyssey to explore Phoebe's questions about her grandmother's dementia and her memories of her father?

As well as being about homecoming, the Odyssey is a story about memory. Other people's memory of Odysseus and Odysseus's own memory of himself and who he is and where he comes from. So you can see why that might be an interesting landscape in which to set the story of a girl grappling with her grandmother's dementia and the sense of losing a person she loves.

As you say, there is another character in the book whose absence looms over the story - Phoebe's father, who died at sea when she was young - and Phoebe has her ways of keeping her father with her, even if sometimes she's unsure where imagination and memory overlap. When she meets Leander, the boy searching for his long-lost father - Odysseus's shipbuilder - that experience gives her a sense of kinship with him.

6. What was it like revisiting the Odyssey with a female hero, and what monsters will she face?

It was huge fun to take a young female character like Phoebe and imagine how she would tackle some of the same challenges as Odysseus, as well as facing her own. When I teach the Odyssey, my pupils often get irritated with Odysseus and feel he doesn't always live up to the title of 'hero', so I particularly enjoyed writing the scene where Phoebe actually gets to meet him and confront him about some of his mistakes.

Even people who've never read the Odyssey often recognise characters from it - the one-eyed giant Cyclops, for example, who traps and eats Odysseus's men, and he certainly makes an appearance in Phoebe's adventure, along with other figures and places that are in Homer. But the monster Phoebe must track down is one I've invented for her story - inspired by some other creatures from Greek myth but with a particular power that makes her a daunting antagonist for Phoebe.

7. Can you tell us about creating the setting for Phoebe's odyssey and what research you undertook into the myths and Ancient Greek history to write it?

The first thing I did in preparation was to re-read Emily Wilson's recent translation of The Odyssey (my ancient Greek, which I learned at university, is far too rusty and rubbish for me to try and decipher it in the original). I also read some retellings of Odysseus's travels by children's authors I really admire like Gillian Cross and Geraldine McCaughrean and Rosemary Sutcliff.

Otherwise, the challenge was actually trying not to do too much research - my previous background in historical fiction often made that a challenge, but I knew it was important I really allowed my imagination let rip, to create as vivid and eerie a setting as possible for Phoebe's adventure. However, I did do some reading about ancient Greek ship-building and sailing techniques, and a learned friend of mine from Bermuda - where I was born and grew up - was kind enough to give me some help in that area.

8. At one point, as you mention, Phoebe visits Odysseus on the island of Calypso. If you could step into any part of The Odyssey, where would it be and who would you want to meet?

That's easy. I'd want to meet Odysseus's dog, Argos. The most beautiful and heart-wrenching scene in the whole of Homer's poem is when Odysseus finally gets back to his homeland of Ithaca and sees Argos, who has been waiting for him to come home for 20 years. I won't spoil that scene for people who haven't read it. But once you have, you'll understand the role of Cass's dog, Claude, in The Odyssey of Phoebe Quilliam. (For the record, Claude is possibly my favourite character in the book, besides Phoebe herself).

9. Have you had any of your own epic adventures in real life, and do you draw on these for your writing?

I'm not nearly as adventurous as I'd like to be. Probably the most epic journey I've made was moving to England at the age of eight from Bermuda. I do remember quite vividly the sense of otherness that came with suddenly living in a different country, going to a new school, getting used to unfamiliar rules and customs, having a different accent from everyone else.

I'm sure that memory of otherness is something that I've used as a writer - whether it's Dido finding herself forced to flee her home and everything she loves in the Circus Maximus books, or Phoebe feeling lost (in more ways than one) in The Odyssey of Phoebe Quilliam.

10. What kinds of things do you enjoy doing when you're away from your desk, and what helps inspire new stories?

I'm like a Labrador when I see water. Swimming, paddleboarding, snorkelling, body-boarding… give me the sea, and I'm happy. Otherwise, I'm an avid film buff, and I often listen to movie soundtracks when I'm writing. Childhood favourites like The Goonies, The Neverending Story and the aforementioned Labyrinth are a great source of inspiration to me as a writer - I'm always drawing on the emotions I felt watching certain scenes in those movies as a kid, and aspiring to pass on some of that emotion on to my readers.

Creative Challenge from Annelise Gray:

EITHER: Learn about the monsters that appear in the Odyssey (for example, The Cyclops, the Sirens, Scylla and Charybdis) and then write about their encounter with Odysseus from the monster's point of view. Be as descriptive and dramatic as you can and really try to get inside the monster's head - how do they feel about being such an object of fear? Would they choose a different life if they could?

OR: Create your own mythical monster. Like many monsters from Greek myth, the monster Phoebe must face in The Odyssey of Phoebe Quilliam is a hybrid - she has the head of one creature but the body of another (at least until she changes shape!) Create your own mythical monster in the same way (you could also look at creatures like the Minotaur or the Centaurs or the Sphinx for inspiration). Then write a description of your monster, including where it lives, any special powers it has, and what danger it poses to heroes who might try to face it. You could do this as a poster, if you prefer.

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