Paul Edmondson is Head of Research and Knowledge and Director of the Stratford-upon-Avon Poetry Festival for the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust. He is the author, co-author, and co-editor of many books and articles about Shakespeare, including Shakespeare: Ideas in Profile (an overview of Shakespeare for the general reader), Twelfth Night: a guide to the text and its Theatrical Life, The Shakespeare Circle: An Alternative Biography and Shakespeare Beyond Doubt: Evidence, Argument, Controversy (both with Stanley Wells for Cambridge University Press), Shakespeare’s Creative Legacies (with Peter Holbrook for The Arden Shakespeare); and Finding Shakespeare’s New Place: an archaeological biography (with archaeologists Kevin Colls and William Mitchell for Manchester University Press). New Places: Shakespeare and Civic Creativity (co-edited with Ewan Fernie is forthcoming with The Arden Shakespeare). His collection of Shakespeare-related poetry, Destination Shakespeare has recently appeared (www.misfitpress.co : the publishers donate a pair of prescription spectacles to a child in India for each copy sold). In the summer of 2014 he made a special tour of the States and North America in search of Shakespeare across 10,000 miles and 14 Shakespeare Festivals in partnership with University of Warwick. He is Chair of the Hosking Houses Trust for women writers, a Trustee of the British Shakespeare Association, and a priest in the Church of England. He has lived and worked in Stratford-upon-Avon since 1995.
He has taken up a number of recent poetic commissions including a Shakespeare song cycle, the anthem for the Shakespeare Sunday service, and has produced a Shakespeare-themed libretto based on the final moments of Richard Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg.