New York, NY – Ayana Gray will publish her debut Adult Fantasy, I, Medusa, with Random House. The forthcoming book garnered many bids on the heels of Gray’s successful YA trilogy Beasts of Prey.
I, Medusa is the retelling of Medusa from Greek Mythology. Gray’s story reimagines Medusa as a Black, queer woman who navigates life while caught in between rivaling Olympian gods. The author takes her time with the mythic figure by presenting a young Medusa and finally a fully grown woman who is accused of a crime she did not commit.
“Her Medusa is a young Black woman navigating an Ancient Greece that more closely resembles the actual Ancient Greece–a place that was culturally, ethnically, and racially diverse–and must grapple with how her appearance and her identity impact how she moves through the world,” Caitlin McKenna, editorial director for fiction at Random House, shares with Publisher’s Weekly (PW).
“When Ayana spoke to the team at Random House, it was instantly clear that they were the right partners—with the right vision—to bring this story into the world with the appropriate force needed for a character as powerful as Ayana’s Medusa.”
Ayana’s vision is birthed from her love for mythology and overall fantasy. She tells PW how she remembers her Greco-Roman lessons about Medusa as incomplete.
“I began to wonder how reimagining Medusa as a young Black woman might challenge—and contribute to—her myth and legacy,” Gray shares with the press. “What I found, as I outlined those opening chapters, was that I was able to relate to Medusa’s story in a new and really visceral way.”
I, Medusa is expected to hit shelves in Fall 2025. To date, Ayana Gray’s Beasts of Prey series has been translated into 10 languages. The first book in the series is slated to come to Netflix in the near future.