Mary Sharratt reads from "The Dark Lady’s Mask: A Novel of Shakespeare’s Muse"

Come hear the story of Aemilia Bassano Lanier, the first professional woman poet in Renaissance England, and her collaboration--and star-crossed love affair--with William Shakespeare.

London, 1593. Aemilia Bassano Lanier is beautiful and accomplished, but her societal conformity ends there. She frequently cross-dresses to escape her loveless marriage and to gain freedoms only men enjoy, but a chance encounter with a ragged, little-known poet named Shakespeare changes everything.

Aemilia grabs at the chance to pursue her long-held dream of writing and the two outsiders strike up a literary bargain. They leave plague-ridden London for Italy, where they begin secretly writing comedies together and where Will falls in love with the beautiful country — and with Aemilia, his Dark Lady. Their Italian idyll, though, cannot last and their collaborative affair comes to a devastating end. Will gains fame and fortune for their plays back in London and years later publishes the sonnets mocking his former muse. Not one to stand by in humiliation, Aemilia takes up her own pen in her defense and in defense of all women.

The Dark Lady’s Mask gives voice to a real Renaissance woman in every sense of the word.

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Mary Sharratt who lives with her Belgian husband in the Pendle region of Lancashire, England, the setting for her acclaimed novel, Daughters of the Witching Hill, which recasts the Pendle Witches of 1612 in their historical context as cunning folk and healers. She is also the author of Illuminations: A Novel of Hildegard von Bingen, which explores the dramatic life of the 12th century Benedictine abbess, composer, polymath, and powerfrau. Winner of the 2013 Nautilus Gold Award, the 2005 WILLA Literary Award, and a Minnesota Book Award Finalist, Mary has also written the novels Summit Avenue, The Real Minerva, and The Vanishing Point, and co-edited the subversive fiction anthology Bitch Lit, which celebrates female anti-heroes. Her short fiction has been published in Twin Cities Noir and elsewhere. Learn more at www.marysharratt.com.