Rachel Kousser
/How did you become a writer? I have been writing in a sustained way since I started keeping a journal at the age of thirteen. I’ve tried everything: poetry, novels, plays, journalism, academic writing — my “day job” is as a professor — and narrative non-fiction, like my recent book, Alexander at the End of the World: The Forgotten Final Years of Alexander the Great (HarperCollins, July 2024). I even write a page or so every month describing what my kid is doing, to send to the grandparents. I think writing in so many formats has given me the courage to experiment.
I don’t feel like there was a threshold I crossed, a moment when I became a writer. It’s more that the writer was always in there, like a sculpture within a piece of marble, and over time, I was able to help it come out.
Name your writing influences (writers, books, teachers, etc.). Many books and teachers have shaped me as a writer, but the most important influence has been my writing partner, Ilyon Woo, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom. Years ago, Ilyon and I were neighbors, trying to write amid the pressures of small children and daily life. She asked me if I wanted a writing partner. I had no idea what I was getting in to, but I knew I wanted to write, and I trusted Ilyon. So I said yes.
Ilyon and I are very different, both personality-wise and in our areas of expertise. That’s made for some spectacular disagreements — I wish I’d preserved her comments on the start of my first chapter, because it was basically a sea of red pen — but it’s also been a real source of strength. From Ilyon, I’ve learned to be bolder in my writing, more of a storyteller.
I’ve also learned from Ilyon to think critically about whose story I am telling. Because I write about the ancient world, it’s easy to adopt the perspective of the ancient literary sources: powerful men, speaking to other powerful men. Ilyon showed me how to turn the camera around, to see, and show to readers, all the people that these ancient texts ignore or denigrate (for instance, women, foreigners, and enslaved persons). My commitment to telling untold stories, which became central to my book, came from her.
When and where do you write? I write whenever and wherever I can: at the kitchen table, at my desk, in cafes, on the subway. But my most substantive writing tends to take place first thing in the morning at the kitchen table. I sit with my computer and a beautiful teal mug that Ilyon gave me, filled with green tea. She has one too (hers is green), and I like to imagine that even though we live in different cities now, we’re up at the same time, with our cups of tea, writing in solidarity. In the morning, my mind is at its clearest, my energy at its height, and no one is asking me for anything. It’s perfect for writing, and my favorite time of day.
What are you working on now? I’m working now on my next book project, a history of the ancient Mediterranean diet through four famous feasts. While researching my book on Alexander the Great, I became fascinated by how many important events in his life took place at feasts: there’s the one where he was almost killed by his father, the one where he himself killed a close friend, the one where he met and married his first wife, Roxanne, etc.
I began to wonder what these feasts were like, for instance what people ate and drank, how they behaved, and how Alexander’s conquests changed them. Writing about them felt like a way to bring this very remote and foreign part of history closer, because we all eat and go to parties. I’ve gotten to learn about everything from the spice trade in the ancient world to glamorous gold and silver drinking cups to how scientific testing of the insides of old pots is allowing us to reconstruct the stews and beverages people ate. It’s been a lot of fun!
Have you ever suffered from writer’s block? There are definitely moments when I stare at the blinking cursor on my computer and feel totally at a loss. The good thing about having spent many years writing is that I know these moments will pass. I close my computer, get out my notebook, and start scribbling by hand, even if it’s just “I have no idea what to write. Why?”
More pernicious than writer’s block for me is writer’s delusion. That’s when I think that what I am writing makes sense and has value, but really, it’s schlock. Because I’m so close to my writing, even now, it’s sometimes hard for me to tell the difference. That’s one way having a writing partner really pays off. I call Ilyon my “schlock detector,” because if I’m going in the wrong direction, she is sure to tell me. And because we check in regularly, it short-circuits the process early on, before I’ve had too much time to get invested in what I’m writing. It’s so much better to dump two weeks’ worth of work than, say, six months’ (and I can say that, having done both. Ouch).
What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever received? At the start of my last year in college, I met with my adviser about my senior thesis. He told me to start writing immediately. I protested that I hadn’t done enough research yet (truth be told, I hadn’t done any research at that point). He told me not to worry, that as I wrote, I would figure out what I truly needed to research, and do that alongside. I was terrified, but he was my adviser, and I didn’t want to disappoint him. So I dutifully went away, gave it a try, and lo and behold, he was right.
Ever since then, I have proceeded with the faith that the writing itself would tell me what I needed to do, research-wise. My professor’s advice has saved me from going down a lot of rabbit holes about things that weren’t truly relevant. It’s also led me in some surprising directions that I would not have predicted ahead of time. And while the research-writing issue is relevant particularly to nonfiction writers, I think his advice to just start writing immediately is important for everyone.
What’s your advice to new writers? If you’re just starting out, my advice would be to cultivate a regular writing practice. Ilyon and I always say to each other, you have to show up for your writing every day. Sometimes the Muse visits, and sometimes she’s busy elsewhere. But if you don’t show up, she can’t come.
Rachel Kousser writes and teaches about Alexander the Great, the destruction of monuments in ancient Greece, and the representation of gender and power in the Mediterranean world. For her work, she has received fellowships from the National Endowment of the Humanities, the Getty Research Institute, and the Center for the Advanced Study of the Visual Arts. She’s published articles in Art Bulletin, American Journal of Archaeology, and Res: Archaeology and Aesthetics as well as two books with Cambridge University Press. Rachel is currently the chair of the Classics Program at the Graduate Center, City University of New York and a professor of ancient art and archaeology at Brooklyn College. She has a B.A. in Classics and Art History from Yale University and a Ph.D. in Classical Art and Archaeology from New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts.
