Cheryl Eagan-Donovan’s Centennial Symposium presentation, “Nothing Is Truer Than Truth: Every Author’s Life Tells a Story,” is now available on the SOF YouTube channel.
The SOF “Shakespeare” Identified Centennial Symposium was held on March 4, 2020, at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., 100 years to the day after the publication of “Shakespeare” Identified in Edward de Vere the Seventeenth Earl of Oxford. That historic 1920 book by British scholar J. Thomas Looney launched the modern Oxfordian theory of Shakespeare authorship.
Eagan-Donovan, a Boston-based film director, writer, and producer, was the third of five speakers at the March 4 celebration. The keynote lecture by James A. Warren was recently posted on YouTube. (Update: Also now available on YouTube are the presentations by Tom Regnier, Bonner Miller Cutting, and Professor Roger Stritmatter.)
Eagan-Donovan’s acclaimed documentary on the life of Edward de Vere (Earl of Oxford), Nothing Is Truer Than Truth, was inspired by Looney’s work and premiered at the Independent Film Festival Boston in 2018. It was released for wide distribution in 2019 and is now available on Amazon Prime and Hulu. (Update: It will be released in an abridged version on TV as Shakespeare: The Man Behind the Name.)
Eagan-Donovan earned her M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Lesley University and has published several articles on screenwriting and film. She teaches writing, film, and literature as an adjunct professor at Lesley University and Northeastern University, and lectures frequently on Shakespearean subjects. She was honored as Oxfordian of the Year in 2019; here is a short video clip of her accepting the award.
Eagan-Donovan’s talk on March 4 explored how Oxford’s youthful travels in Europe, especially Italy — and his possible bisexuality — influenced the Shakespearean plays and poems. She also discussed Oxford’s early known poetry and showed a trailer of her documentary. She was introduced by the Centennial Symposium moderator, award-winning journalist and author Bob Meyers, who served formerly as president of the National Press Foundation and director of the Harvard Journalism Fellowship for Advanced Studies in Public Health.
[published April 10, 2020, updated 2021]
