Gillian Murray Kendall

Gillian Murray Kendall is an English Professor at Smith College where she teaches Shakespeare and 17th Century Poetry as well as the post-apocalyptic novel and creative writing. She is married to biologist Robert Dorit and has two children, Sasha and Gabriel. She lives in Northampton, Massachusetts ("where the coffee is strong, and the women are stronger"). There. Now do you know who I am?

This may help. I have a size 7 shoe. I read books I love over and over and over. I ride horses and jump over increasingly large obstacles. That's me.

My first novel, *The Garden of Darkness*, is more than I am; it comes from that nebulous place in the brain where ideas form. I grabbed some of those ideas, rearranged them, and wrote a post-apocalyptic novel that is deeply about the will to survive and the nature of friendship and, finally, about love.

My second novel, *The Book of Forbidden Wisdom*, is set in a world where the highborn heroine is taught that love is an inconvenience and an arranged marriage is far more practical. In Angel's quest to find the Book that will set her sister and herself free, however, she finds herself deeply attracted to both a friend and an itinerant singer. She must learn not only the secrets of the Book of Forbidden Wisdom, but the secrets of her heart.

I'm also an editor of a collection of essays, *Shakespearean Power and Punishment.* Check out the cool cover on Amazon.

Happy reading.

I hope you enjoy *The Garden of Darkness* and meeting Clare and Jem. And I hope you fall in love with Angel and Silky and Trey in *The Book of Forbidden Wisdom*.