About Grace Tiffany

Grace Tiffany is an American writer and Shakespeare scholar. She's edited Shakespeare's The Tempest and written articles and nonfiction books about Renaissance literature, as well as seven novels, including Will (Berkley 2004), My Father Had a Daughter (Berkley 2003), Ariel (HarperCollins 2005), The Turquoise Ring (Berkley 2005), Paint (Bagwyn Books 2013), Gunpowder Percy (Bagwyn, 2016), and The Owl Was a Baker's Daughter (forthcoming from Harper in 2025). Her first novel, My Father Had a Daughter, appeared on the Booksense 76 independent bookstores’ best-books list of 2003. Her fourth, Ariel, was listed as a best book by the National Library Assocation in 2006. Her third novel, The Turquoise Ring, is a retelling of Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice from the perspective of the five women in the play. The book has been translated into Hebrew, Russian, and Hungarian (Magyar). Renowned Columbia University Shakespeare scholar James Shapiro has called The Turquoise Ring one of the six best creative adaptations of Shakespeare in history, grouping it with Millais' painting Ophelia and Tom Stoppard's dark comedy Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. Tiffany's 2016 Gunpowder Percy follows the fortunes of one of the ringleaders of the infamous Gunpowder Plot, an instance of early-modern religious terrorism, and its chilling punishments, in England. Her 2013 novel, Paint, is based on the turbulent life of seventeenth-century poet Emilia Lanier, a reputed lover of Shakespeare and one of the first Englishwomen to see her writing in print. (Read Michigan Live's discussion of Paint at: http://www.mlive.com/entertainment/kalamazoo/index.ssf/2013/12/6_facts_about_the_scandalous_p.html.)

Tiffany's newest novel, The Owl Was a Baker's Daughter, explores the painful fracturing of a family caught up in the political and religious struggles of the English Civil War.  The book is forthcoming from HarperCollins in early 2025. Her latest academic book, from Arizona State University Press, is a translation of selected works by the Argentinian author Jorge Luis Borges, entitled Borges on Shakespeare.

Grace Tiffany talks about writing, history, and fiction with Texas Radio's Jim McKeown at http://kwbu.org/post/behind-story-interview-grace-tiffany