Loving Shakespeare. (PW Talks with Sarah Smith).(author)(Interview)

PW: How did you happen to write Chasing Shakespeares [see review, p. 52]?

Sarah Smith: My real life contribution to the Shakespeare authorship controversy was finding a good, Shakespearean-sounding poem probably written by the Earl of Oxford. One contradiction of Oxford being "the true Shakespeare," the real author of the canon, is that there is very little poetry that has been identified as his. I think we can say that this poem is Oxford's, and it's good, it's "Shakespearean."

PW: You've written historical fiction. Were you tempted to set this mystery in Elizabethan times?

SS: No, because the narrator's story, Joe Roper's story, is too important. …