A Letter for William Shakespeare (+ Giveaway)

Last year, I was very impressed with Ava Dellaira's debut novel, Love Letters to the Dead. It was compelling, and I really enjoyed the epistolary storytelling style that she utilized to tell Laurel's story. The novel is coming out in paperback on September 29, and I'm pleased to be a part of the blog tour to celebrate its release. For this tour, each blogger was asked to write their own letter. (Note: You can also write your own letters, and share them here!) I chose to address my thoughts to William Shakespeare, which probably won't surprise those of you who know I'm a big fan of his work! I also get to share Ava's response, which is the letter below mine (and is really great).

Dear William Shakespeare, 

I’m admittedly nervous starting this letter, and it’s all because I fear that my own words won’t live up to the greatness of all the words you’ve left behind. Ever since I was a young girl, from the moment I first got hold of your tragedy Romeo & Juliet, I have considered myself a devoted fan of your work. There’s just something absolutely, undeniably magical in the way you string together words into phrases into sentences into complete written works. It’s certainly awe-inspiring in how perfectly your words can strike the heart, convey a feeling or paint a scene. It’s also quite intimidating, particularly to a girl like me who writes her own stories just for fun.

How in the world did you do it? How did you come up with these timeless stories, stories that have inspired other tales in many mediums, stories that have become a part of the literature tackled in academics year after year? Did you know that you were going to leave such a significant mark on the world? Or were you, perhaps, merely writing for your own pleasure and amusement? Or to express all your own emotions in the most imaginative of ways? It would certainly be something if I could learn the secrets behind your drive to create or your actual creations. And I definitely wouldn’t mind getting a tidbit or two about some of my favorite works from you! 

Since that isn’t likely to be happening, I suppose I mostly just want to write to thank you. Your words were my solace and my encouragement during a difficult time in my life. They allowed me to escape my daily stresses and find myself lost within these imaginative, sometimes funny, sometimes sad worlds and experience someone else’s life for a time. Your words made me feel things as I read them; your words grabbed my heart and my soul and my thoughts so completely that I found myself wanting to immerse myself further in books and writing. It is you and your comedies and your tragedies, and later the sonnets, that got me interested in reading more classical literature. And it is your stories that continue to inspire, challenge and encourage me as I pursue my own stories to share with the world. 

With deep appreciation, 

Alexa

Dear Alexa,

Thank you so much for your wonderful letter to William Shakespeare! I loved reading about the ways in which he’s inspired you and your own writing. Even if William can’t respond (at least not in letter form), I imagine your ongoing relationship to his works will always feel like a conversation of sorts; one that you can continue throughout your life. I think that one of the gifts of great literature is that we can return to it again and again, deepening, renewing, rediscovering our relationship to it at different points in our lives.

Romeo and Juliette was the first William Shakespeare play I fell in love with, too--though, admittedly, my gateway was the Baz Luhrmann film Romeo + Juliette, which was the first movie I saw without a parent. (I was in seventh grade, in a theater full of my friends, but I was so captivated I hardly knew anyone else was there. And oh, how I sobbed!) Afterwards, I pored over the book.

As you so eloquently point out, it’s amazing to think of the timelessness of Shakespeare’s work, and of all of the people in the world who have formed a relationship to his words. With between 2 – 4 billion copies of his books in print, the numbers are almost mind-boggling! You share a love of him with people living in different parts of the world, people who speak different languages, people living at different moments in history; what an amazing connection. And yet, for each individual person who falls in love with his works the way that you have, they exist uniquely.

So, thank you Alexa, for sharing your letter to Shakespeare with all of us. I wish you the best of luck with your writing, and I’m sure if he could, he would, too!

Yours,

Ava 

Thanks to lovely people at Macmillan, I'm hosting a giveaway for a paperback copy of Love Letters to the Dead. This giveaway is US ONLY, and you can enter via the Rafflecopter form below:

a Rafflecopter giveaway Don't forget to visit these other lovely blogs on the tour!

September 21st: Forever Young Adult

September 22nd: Rebel Mommy Book Blog

September 23rd: Fangirl Feels

September 24th: The Reading Nook Reviews

September 25th: Alexa Loves Books

September 28th: YA Bibliophile

September 29th: Into the Hall of Books