A to Z Challenge Theme Reveal 2025: Women's Epics A to Z!

Honestly, I already revealed this theme last year, but I am doing it again for good measure (for someone who has changed their theme multiple times every year, this is an accomplishment anyway). 

Also, I have a theme that aligns really well with International Women's Day, so I am announcing a day early :)

This is my 13th year participating! In the past 12 years I've always had a theme:

Weird Princesses (2013)
Tales with Colors (2014)
Epics A to Z (2015)
Diversity A to Z (2016)
WTF - Weird Things in Folktales (2017)
WTF Hungary - Weird Things in Hungarian Folktales (2018)
Fruit Folktales (2019)
Folktales of Endangered Species (2020)
Tarot Tales (2021)
Gemstone Folklore (2022)
Body Folktales (2023)
Romance Tropes in Folklore (2024)

This year's theme came to me last April, just as I was finishing up the challenge. I have always loved epics, and I love reading new ones whenever I can get my hands on them. I started thinking about the epics I have read so far, and stories with women as heroes in general. And so, the theme was born:

WOMEN'S EPICS!

The goal was to read 26 epics with women heroes, and blog about each one for A to Z. It took a full year to schedule the entire series!

A couple of things in advance:

1. By 'epic' I mean traditional epics. Think The Iliad, The Odyssey, Gilgamesh, etc. Stories that have been passed down through centuries and generations, orally told, performed, belonging to a culture's intangible heritage. Not literary works or film. So no, no Hunger Games or Lord of the Rings or Star Wars. Sorry.

2. Sometimes it is hard to define if a story is an epic, a myth, a legend, or something else. Most of the stories I included in the 26 were labeled epics by researchers, collectors, and tradition bearers. Some belong to genres that are the equivalent of what we call "epic" in the Western world (for example, Japanese monogatari). Some I included because they are long narrative poems or prose stories that are based on a larger oral tradition, even if they are not technically epics (see: medieval chivalric romances).

3. All of the stories I included have women heroes. I use "hero" in the sense of traditional stories, as the main protagonist or central figure of the narrative. So no, I did not pick male-led stories and try to prove that "yeah, actually, Penelope is the real hero of the Odyssey!" Nope! I picked stories with women as lead characters. And yes, I found 26. Actually, I found a lot more! But I picked 26 that I could actually read, and fit into the alphabet for A to Z.

4. With that said, epics are a complex genre, with complex characters, and none of them can really be studied divorced from the time and culture it came from. On a practical level this means that you won't equally like all of these women heroes. Some of them do things that are very much questionable to our modern sensibilities, or have character traits we don't like. And that's okay. Odysseus, Gilgamesh, Achilles and the lot are also not exactly Lawful Good.

5. The good news is, the lineup I ended up with is really colorful in terms of origins. The 26 epics represent 4 continents and 21 different cultures!

In the next weeks before April I am going to have a few more posts coming up!

1. A post on epics that did not make the cut. I thought they deserve a shout out even if I did not end up reading them.

2. A post on an online survey I made about how well people generally know epics, and which ones are the most well-known ones. I thought it was a fascinating question to run by the people of the Internet.

I HOPE TO SEE ALL OF YOU HERE IN APRIL! If you are participating in A to Z, make sure to leave a link to your blog in the comments so I can visit back.

I dedicate this series to my epic-telling mentor, Cathryn Fairlee, the creator of Epic Day, an all-around amazing mentor, and a true lover of epics. 

I miss you, Cathryn.