Grace Tiffany, novelist and Shakespeare scholar, discusses and reads from her latest fictional work, The Owl Was a Baker’s Daughter: The Continuing Adventures of Judith Shakespeare. Set in 1641 during the English Civil War, the book centers on a Shakespeare family member, beset with personal griefs, who becomes embroiled in a highly theatrical plot in a nation riven by two hostile religious and political factions. Judith finds a middle pathway in an era of censorship, hostility toward the arts, and bloody battlefield conflict. The Owl Was a Baker’s Daughter was praised by The New York Times as “stellar historical fiction imbued with a rich sense of place” (1/28/25).

Tiffany’s six other novels range in subject from the lives of the Shakespeares, to “twisted” versions of Shakespeare’s plays, to intrigues during the reigns of the monarchs Elizabeth and James, including the 1605 Gunpowder Plot. Tiffany has also translated the work of Jorge Luís Borges (in Borges on Shakespeare, Arizona State University Press, 2018), edited Shakespeare’s The Tempest (Cengage, 2012), and authored two scholarly monographs and numerous journal articles on Shakespeare and his world. She teaches literature at Western Michigan University and at Lakeland Correctional Facility in Kalamazoo and Coldwater, Michigan.

Grace Tiffany is a novelist and Shakespeare scholar. Her latest fictional work, The Owl Was a Baker’s Daughter, was praised by The New York Times as “stellar historical fiction imbued with a rich sense of place” (1/28/25). Her six other novels range in subject from the lives of the Shakespeares, to intrigues at the courts of the monarchs Elizabethan and James, to the 1605 Gunpowder Plot. Tiffany has also translated the work of Jorge Luís Borges (in Borges on Shakespeare, Arizona State University Press, 2018), edited Shakespeare’s The Tempest (Cengage, 2012), and authored two scholarly monographs and numerous journal articles on Shakespeare and his world. She teaches literature at Western Michigan University and at Lakeland Correctional Facility in Kalamazoo and Coldwater, Michigan.