Emily C.A. Snyder

Emily C. A. Snyder is a published and internationally produced playwright and novelist, whose work has been performed from Christchurch, New Zealand to Dublin, Ireland. A NYC-based verse coach and director, she is the premiere international scholar on writing and performing new verse drama.

Emily holds her Masters in Theatre Education from Emerson College, and a double-major with her BA in English: Literature and Drama from Franciscan University of Steubenville. She studied John Barton's Shakespearean technique with members of the Royal Shakespeare Company in London and Stratford-upon-Avon, where her Rosalind (As You Like It) was compared to a young Maggie Smith.

For the past twenty years, Emily has directed the major works of Shakespeare's canon in New York city (Richard II with Hamlet Isn't Dead, King Lear with What Dreams May Co.) and the greater Boston area (Hamlet, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, The Tempest, The Taming of the Shrew, Twelfth Night, As You Like It, Much Ado About Nothing, and A Midsummer Night's Dream twice, among others), as well as many original works. In Boston, she ran Gaudete Academy, a company dedicated to providing Summer Shakespeare courses for adolescents and young adults. Emily is a much sought-out teaching artist, specializing in bringing Shakespeare to life for students of all ages.

Her new verse plays have received several commendations. In 2014, her Cupid and Psyche performed to sold-out audiences in New York City. Her Shakespearean homage, A Comedy of Heirors was named one of the Top 15 NYC Shows of 2017 by A Work Unfinishing, and was a semi-finalist with the American Shakespeare Center's (ASC) "Shakespeare's New Contemporaries." Her feminist sequel to Shakespeare's Merry Wives, her Merry Widows of Windsor was selected for development and a fully staged reading with The Sheen Center for Thought and Culture, and is in consideration with the ASC. Her verse plays have also received commendation from the Eugene O'Neill, Princess Grace Foundation, and Thornton Wilder Foundation.

Emily is the author of the Twelve Kingdoms Series, which includes Niamh and the Hermit ~ A Fairy Tale, and Charming the Moon. Her work has been compared to C. S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkein, and Alfred, Lord Dunsany. She is also the author of the Jane Austen parody-homages, Nachtstürm Castle - A Gothic Austen Novel, and Letters of Love & Deception. Currently, she is working The Sable Valentine, an epistolary mystery series, described as "The Scarlet Pimpernel...with magic."

Next up, her sexy new French farce, The Other, Other Woman, written in rhyming couplets, will receive a workshop presentation in October through TURN TO FLESH PRODUCTIONS. Her epic, two-part Arthurian play, The Table Round and The Siege Perilous, written in blank verse, are under commission with the Sheen Center.

You can learn more at emilycasnyder.info, Amazon or New Play Exchange.