David Gowdey

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

I first discovered Shakespeare at a Stratford Ontario Festival production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I was eight years old, and a hockey fan, so Puck was the character who appealed to me most. But the night was unforgettable, and part of it I carry with me still.

I have a Bachelor of Arts in English and a Master of Arts in Film. I love the work of Shakespeare and Tove Jansson, Stanley Kubrick and Jean-Pierre Melville, Alice Munro and Jack Kerouac. I was a partner in a film production company, but my main interest has always been writing. After completing a screenplay about the 1905 Yukon challenge for hockey’s Stanley Cup, I realized that there had never been a good anthology of writing about hockey. My first collection Riding On the Roar of the Crowd was published by Macmillan and was called “a rare, worthwhile project in sports literature” (Financial Post), and “the best book of the year by the length of a slapshot” (Toronto Star). Canadian writer and musician Dave Bidini chose it as the first book he would suggest to a newcomer to Canada to convey a sense of the country. For four years I collaborated with the president of the Baseball Writers Association on a series of baseball annuals, and have also written about basketball, sailing and movies.

For my fourth anthology, Secret Whispers: Searching for the Truth of Shakespeare, I read everything I could find on the subject of the authorship of Shakespeare, hundreds of books and articles that looked at the question from every angle. Contributors range from Henry James and Mark Twain to Ros Barber and Mark Rylance. The arguments aren't easily summarized, and some of the discussion can be daunting for a beginner, but I’ve uncovered and brought together the most straightforward and entertaining pieces I could find. I had no real interest in Elizabethan England before I started the project, so I’m a perfect example of how the subject can capture your attention and reel you in.