Karen Essex

Novelist Karen Essex remembers when she first encountered the name Aspasia, a courtesan in ancient Greece, while wading through a copy of Plutarch in graduate school. "Plutarch suddenly starts talking about Aspasia as Pericles' mistress," she said, mentioning the Athenian leader. Aspasia "had the respect of the most intelligent men in an Athens in which women weren't even citizens and were completely sequestered.