Emily C. A. Snyder
Encyclopedia
Emily C. A. Snyder is an American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 novelist, playwright and director.

She attended the Franciscan University of Steubenville
Franciscan University of Steubenville
Franciscan University of Steubenville is a Catholic institution located in Steubenville, Ohio, west of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The school was founded in 1946 by the Franciscan Friars of the Third Order Regular. In 1974, Fr...

, Ohio
Ohio
Ohio is a Midwestern state in the United States. The 34th largest state by area in the U.S.,it is the 7th‑most populous with over 11.5 million residents, containing several major American cities and seven metropolitan areas with populations of 500,000 or more.The state's capital is Columbus...

, for her undergraduate degree where she studied theatre and literature. In 2009, she received her masters in Theatre Education from Emerson College
Emerson College
Emerson College is a private coeducational university located in Boston, Massachusetts. Founded in 1880 by Charles Wesley Emerson as a "school of oratory," Emerson is "the only comprehensive college or university in America dedicated exclusively to communication and the arts in a liberal arts...

 in Boston, MA. She has taught at Saint Bernadette Catholic School
Saint Bernadette Catholic School
Saint Bernadette School is a private, catholic elementary school in New Haven, Connecticut founded in 1956 and is merged with Saint Bernadette Catholic Church. It provides education for ages 3–14 and usually stays within 150-200 kids in the school. The current principal is Dr...

 in Northborough, MA, Hudson Catholic High School
Hudson Catholic High School (Hudson, Massachusetts)
Hudson Catholic High School was a coeducational Catholic school in Hudson, Massachusetts, USA. It is within the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston. On March 29, 2009, the parents and students were told that the high school would close in June, after it graduated its 50th class...

 and Hudson High School
Hudson High School (Massachusetts)
Hudson High School is a public high school located in Hudson, Middlesex County, Massachusetts. It is administered by the Hudson Public Schools system, and serves grades 8 through 12 . The current principal is John H...

, Hudson, MA, and the Performing Arts Center of Metrowest
Performing Arts Center of Metrowest
The Performing Arts Center of MetroWest is located at 140 Pearl Street in downtown Framingham, Massachusetts over the Danforth Museum.PAC's board of directors, staff, and faculty are deeply committed to promoting cultural education in the community...

 in Framingham, MA. Currently, she lives in Marlborough, Massachusetts
Marlborough, Massachusetts
Marlborough is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 38,499 at the 2010 census. Marlborough became a prosperous industrial town in the 19th century and made the transition to high technology industry in the late 20th century after the construction of the...

.

Twelve Kingdoms

Snyder is the author of the Twelve Kingdoms Novels, set in an alternative Celtic world, published by Arx Publishers, LLC. Her first novel, Niamh and the Hermit, subtitled "A Fairy Tale" received mixed reviews, mostly based around the rich but archaic language of the book. Reactions ranged from Thomas Howard
Thomas Howard (writer and scholar)
Thomas Howard is a highly acclaimed writer and scholar. A convert to Roman Catholicism, he is known for his studies of C.S. Lewis, and Charles Williams, as well as for books such as his Christ the Tiger and Evangelical is Not Enough ....

's (Author of C.S. Lewis: Man of Letters):
"When I first saw this book, I feared that it might be just another effort to hook on to the Tolkien wagon. It is not. Very far from that. It is wholly original, and all I can say is that it is beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. The author is entirely in control of her narrative, and, drawing on the tradition of ancient Celtic tales, gives us something genuinely new. What we have here is a very noble achievement."


To such Amazon.com
Amazon.com
Amazon.com, Inc. is a multinational electronic commerce company headquartered in Seattle, Washington, United States. It is the world's largest online retailer. Amazon has separate websites for the following countries: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Japan, and...

 reviews as:
"I bought the book to read for fun. Sometimes I felt like I had to study the book to understand what was going on. The dialogue was long and written in a style that required a lot of words with little meaning. I would have to stop and think about what was being said to get the point of the dialogue. There is very little setting description and the author moves between characters with little explanation. I wish it had been written more in a modern style to allow the characters and story to flow easier."


Niamh and the Hermit featured original artwork and music by the author. A second novella, Charming the Moon was published soon after.

Gothic Austen

Snyder has also published what she terms a "Gothic Austen" novel, Nachtstürm Castle from Girlebooks.com. This sequel to Jane Austen
Jane Austen
Jane Austen was an English novelist whose works of romantic fiction, set among the landed gentry, earned her a place as one of the most widely read writers in English literature, her realism and biting social commentary cementing her historical importance among scholars and critics.Austen lived...

's Northanger Abbey
Northanger Abbey
Northanger Abbey was the first of Jane Austen's novels to be completed for publication, though she had previously made a start on Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice. According to Cassandra Austen's Memorandum, Susan was written approximately during 1798–99...

 has received generally positive reviews from Austen aficionados.

From 1999-2000, Snyder published under the pseudonym Elspeth on the Republic of Pemberley
Republic of Pemberley
The Republic of Pemberley is an online community dedicated to the appreciation of the work of the English author Jane Austen. The site was established shortly after the release of the 1995 BBC adaptation of Austen's novel, Pride and Prejudice, and takes its name from the estate owned by the hero...

.

Short Stories

Marion Zimmer Bradley
Marion Zimmer Bradley
Marion Eleanor Zimmer Bradley was an American author of fantasy novels such as The Mists of Avalon and the Darkover series. Many critics have noted a feminist perspective in her writing. Her first child, David R...

 first published Snyder in Marion Zimmer Bradley's Fantasy Magazine
Marion Zimmer Bradley's Fantasy Magazine
Marion Zimmer Bradley's Fantasy Magazine was a quarterly fantasy magazine founded and initially edited by fantasy and science fiction author Marion Zimmer Bradley. Fifty issues appeared from summer 1988 through December 2000. It was published by MZB Enterprises from 1988-1989, Marion Zimmer Bradley...

, with the short story: If We Shadows Have Offended.

Soon after that, Snyder was invited to contribute to Sword and Sorceress
Sword and Sorceress series
The Sword and Sorceress series is a series of fantasy anthologies edited by Marion Zimmer Bradley, and originally published by DAW Books. As she explained in the foreword to the first volume, she created the anthology to redress the lack of strong female protagonists in the sub-genre of sword and...

, an on-going anthology edited by Marion Zimmer Bradley. Snyder's short story Better Seen Than Heard appeared in Sword and Sorceress XIX.

Theatre

From 1998-present, Snyder has been active in the theatre, working primarily as a director and playwright.

Published Plays

In 2009, she began publishing her plays through Playscripts, Inc.
Playscripts, Inc.
Playscripts, Inc. is a New York City-based publisher of new plays and musicals, founded by brothers and playwrights Doug and Jonathan Rand. Included in the exclusive Playscripts catalog are over 1,600 plays and musicals by over 800 authors....


These include:
  • Wallace's Will  (Part of An Evening's Diversion series.)
  • The French Butler (Part of An Evening's Diversion series.)
  • Charming Princes (Part of Grimms Aghast series.)
  • Math for Actors

Produced Plays

Many of Snyder's original plays and musicals have been completed and produced, including:
  • Cupid and Psyche
    Cupid and Psyche
    Cupid and Psyche , is a legend that first appeared as a digressionary story told by an old woman in Lucius Apuleius' novel, The Golden Ass, written in the 2nd century CE. Apuleius likely used an earlier tale as the basis for his story, modifying it to suit the thematic needs of his novel.It has...

     (2009 Boston, MA) - Five act iambic pentameter play
  • Nutracker (2005 Marlborough, MA) - Story-in-Dance based on Hoffmann's fairy tale of the same name, using the music of Tchaikovsky
  • King of Fools (2005 Hudson, MA) - Musical loosely based on Grimms
    Grimms
    GRIMMS was an English pop rock, skit and poetry group, originally formed as a merger of The Scaffold, the Bonzo Dog Band, and the Liverpool Scene for two concerts in 1971 at the suggestion of John Gorman...

     King Thrushbeard
  • Bearskin
    Bearskin
    A bearskin is a tall fur cap, usually worn as part of a ceremonial military uniform. Traditionally, the bearskin was the headgear of grenadiers, and is still worn by grenadier and guards regiments in various armies.-Origins:...

     (2004 Marlborough, MA) - Opera-ballet loosely based on the Grimms
    Grimms
    GRIMMS was an English pop rock, skit and poetry group, originally formed as a merger of The Scaffold, the Bonzo Dog Band, and the Liverpool Scene for two concerts in 1971 at the suggestion of John Gorman...

     fairy tale of the same name

Director

In addition to working with the schools listed above, Snyder has also directed for the Sudbury Savoyards (2004 Gilbert and Sullivan
Gilbert and Sullivan
Gilbert and Sullivan refers to the Victorian-era theatrical partnership of the librettist W. S. Gilbert and the composer Arthur Sullivan . The two men collaborated on fourteen comic operas between 1871 and 1896, of which H.M.S...

's Pirates of Penzance), the Hudson/Marlborough Arts Alliance (2005 Cole Porter
Cole Porter
Cole Albert Porter was an American composer and songwriter. Born to a wealthy family in Indiana, he defied the wishes of his domineering grandfather and took up music as a profession. Classically trained, he was drawn towards musical theatre...

's Kiss Me, Kate
Kiss Me, Kate
Kiss Me, Kate is a musical with music and lyrics by Cole Porter. It is structured as a play within a play, where the interior play is a musical version of William Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew. The original production starred Alfred Drake, Patricia Morison, Lisa Kirk and Harold Lang.Kiss...

) and Framingham Community Theatre (2010 Agatha Christie
Agatha Christie
Dame Agatha Christie DBE was a British crime writer of novels, short stories, and plays. She also wrote romances under the name Mary Westmacott, but she is best remembered for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections , and her successful West End plays.According to...

's And Then There Were None
And Then There Were None
And Then There Were None is a detective fiction novel by Agatha Christie, first published in the United Kingdom by the Collins Crime Club on 6 November 1939 under the title Ten Little Niggers which was changed by Dodd, Mead and Company in January 1940 because of the presence of a racial...

).

Christian Guide to Fantasy

In 2000, Snyder launched the Christian Guide to Fantasy which was in answer to many Christian parents initial fear of the Harry Potter
Harry Potter
Harry Potter is a series of seven fantasy novels written by the British author J. K. Rowling. The books chronicle the adventures of the adolescent wizard Harry Potter and his best friends Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger, all of whom are students at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry...

 novels. The site was a series of reviews of popular fantasy novels, meant as a guide for the concerned parents. It has remained a mostly frozen site for the past several years.

Tower of Ivory E-zine

For a few years, Snyder and her college partner Annie McAndrew co-edited Tower of Ivory E-zine, which featured short-stories, articles, poems, artwork and interviews, of such notables as Teresa Edgerton
Teresa Edgerton
Teresa Edgerton is an author of fantasy novels and short stories set in worlds that parallel the Middle Ages and the 18th century.-Literary biography:...

, whom she credits as one of her greatest literary influences. Tower of Ivory closed in 2003.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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