Shakespeare in LA

From the press release:

“In one of the season’s most mesmerizing, absurdly witty, and provocative memoirs – Sex with Shakespeare – Jillian Keenan recounts how she came to understand love and relationships through 14 selected works of Shakespeare.

Four hundred years after Shakespeare’s death, Keenan’s smart and thoughtful memoir brings new interpretations to his work. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Keenan unmasks Helena as a sexual masochist – like Jillian herself. In Macbeth, she examines criminalized sexual identities and the dark side of ‘privacy.’ The Taming of the Shrew goes inside the secret world of bondage, domination, and sadomasochism, while King Lear exposes the ill-fated king as a possible sexual predator. Moving through the canon, Keenan makes it abundantly clear that literature is a conversation. In Sex with Shakespeare, words are love.

With heart, humor, and unwavering knowledge of the Bard himself, Jillian Keenan discusses the fraught topics of love, romance, sexuality, and above all, the differences between our most private and public selves. Sex With Shakespeare is a tale that inspires an unwavering understanding and acceptance.

As a literary nerd, a pop culture enthusiast, and former dramaturg (in Singapore and London), Jillian lives and breathes Shakespeare. She received her BA and MA from Stanford and has written on topics from human rights to sexuality for numerous publications such as the New York Times, The New Yorker, Washington Post, Slate, Foreign Policy, Marie Claire, and The Atlantic. ”

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“You may have studied Shakespeare in high school, but it’s almost guaranteed that your literary analysis wasn’t anything like this! Interspersed with revelatory passages of close literary reading and exposition on Shakespeare’s work are revealing passages of a different nature—the author’s own story as she comes to terms with her sexual identity.” –Library Journal

“Visceral, funny, and perceptive, this startling and very personal take on Shakespeare is genuinely revealing—not only about the author, but even more about the plays. Keenan notices and responds to things that criticism on the whole ignores. An enjoyable and impressive book.” –Stephen Orgel, Ph.D., Jackson Eli Reynolds Professor in Humanities at Stanford University and author of Imagining Shakespeare

“Keenan’s intimate conversations with Shakespeare offer new and often startling insights into his plays. They are also deeply moving, and deeply courageous, challenging us to rethink sexuality in fundamental ways.” –Ania Loomba, Ph.D., Catherine Bryson Professor of English, University of Pennsylvania, and author of Shakespeare, Race, and Colonialism

SEX WITH SHAKESPEARE
By Jillian Keenan
On Sale April 26, 2016
ISBN: 9780062378712
ISBN 10: 0062378716
Imprint: William Morrow
Pages: 352
www.harpercollins.com/9780062378712/sex-with-shakespeare