If you meet Gareth Hinds at a dinner party and he tells you he’s a graphic novelist, you might be tempted to envision superheroes in capes — wielding shields, ray guns or magical powers. You’d be right, but you’d also be wrong.
Hinds’ work does have heroes and some have weapons, but his novels are primarily adapted from literary classics, such as Beowulf, The Odyssey and The Iliad. His source material also comes from Shakespeare’s King Lear, The Merchant of Venice, Romeo and Juliet and Macbeth.
“Basically what I do is I take those texts, I read them a bunch of times, from different translations, and then I rewrite them in my own words but try to keep the feeling of the original,” Hinds explains. “And then I illustrate them, trying to keep the mood and evoke all the emotions of the original story.”
The books have been well received. “The original Odyssey by Homer, available to most of us in translation, is an awesome story,” a March 2026 review by the blog Rhapsody In Books said. “The graphic version by Gareth Hinds makes that awesome story much more accessible to a modern audience by substituting more contemporary dialogue for the archaic (even when translated) text of the original, as well as by replacing much of the narrative with appealing and action-packed illustrations.”
Turning a 500- to 600-page text into a 270-page graphic novel might seem daunting — because it is — which is why it takes Hinds anywhere from two to three years to deliver a completed manuscript to his publisher, Candlewick Press. “I write the script, then do the rough sketches and then the final art,” he said. “It’s like a storyboard. So when the final drawings are all done, it’s the coloring.”
There are many texts to draw from, but Hinds tends to work from those that he read in high school or college. He is an avid reader, so the breadth of possibilities is wide.
Graphic novels by Gareth Hinds. Courtesy Gareth Hinds
“I have a list in my head of books that I’ve been thinking about, and I sort of ask myself, ‘What am I excited to do? What do I think the market wants?’ Sometimes I’ve gotten fan mail from kids, or I go to teacher conferences, and I know what teachers are asking me for. So I will look at that list and maybe start doing some test pieces for a couple different things, or I’ll start talking to my editor.”
Hinds was born and raised in a small town in Vermont, a nerdy kid who loved reading and drawing. A good student who was fascinated by martial arts, he did illustrations and comics for his high school newspaper, co-edited and illustrated the literary magazine and painted a mural on the wall of one of the school hallways.
He enjoyed math and science, but English was also a favorite subject. “One of my English teachers handed me The Odyssey one day and said, ‘You’re going to enjoy this,’ so she changed my life.”
When the time came to apply to colleges, Hinds toyed with the idea of becoming an engineer, but he decided to pursue art. He did two years at the Rochester Institute of Technology in upstate New York before transferring to the Parsons School of Design in Manhattan.
At Parsons, Hinds dabbled in many types of illustration and initially thought he would do editorial or book covers. But he was getting good feedback on his comic book drawings, so for his senior year thesis project, he did an adaptation of the Brothers Grimm fairy tale Bearskin, about a dismissed soldier who makes a pact with the devil. “I ended up self-publishing that book, and it really taught me a lot about the publishing process and about the publishing world,” Hinds explained. “I decided that I really enjoyed it enough that I wanted to keep doing it and knew enough about the industry to do a little bit more ambitious book, which was Beowulf. And then Beowulf took off not only at retail, but with teachers, which was not something that I had initially set out to.”
Storyboard process for Hinds’ next book, the Aeneid, to be released in spring 2027.
Beowulf was Hinds’ first book to be picked up by an established publisher. Including Beowulf, Hinds has published 11 books, which are popular with teachers and teenagers.
“Often kids are encountering these around the same time that they might start to pick up the originals or they might have in years past,” he said. His books are generally recommended for ages 12 and up, but some of them skew younger. Hinds said he has gotten fan mail from parents of 5- and 6-year-olds who are obsessed with his books. “That is not something I ever expected.”
Hinds is a one-man operation, handling all aspects of his brand from the creative side as well as the business aspects, conventions and book signings. “I do everything, which maybe is nuts, and I’ve been thinking about whether I need to change that,” he said.
A typical day for the author consists of about four hours of creative time, coupled with three or four hours running the business. This ratio changes closer to the time a book is due to the publisher. Once all the hard decisions have been made and the deadline is looming, he might work nine or 10 hours a day, Hinds said.
Hinds has lived in Boston, New York and D.C., but he and his wife, Alison, moved to Hyattsville in 2018. He loves the community aspect of the city and the creative energy of the Arts District. And it seems the community loves him back.
“When The Iliad came out, we did a launch party at Vigilante,” he said. “It was by far the most successful launch event I’ve ever done. Over 300 people showed up for it.”
This spring the author will be holding several local events, which will be posted on his website, garethhinds.com.