Colleen Sehy is a writer and speaker with special expertise in English, Scottish, Welsh, Irish, and Shakespearean history and culture in America. She draws inspiration from a lifelong love of the British Isles, numerous visits to Great Britain and Ireland, and more than thirty years of traveling across the United States and Canada exploring places with links to the countries of the British Isles. Her love of Shakespeare dates to her college days, when a Shakespeare class at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign changed the course of her life. She went on to graduate from Columbia College Chicago, where she completed an internship at Chicago's famed Goodman Theatre and earned a bachelor's degree in the school's trailblazing Arts, Entertainment, and Media Management program, one of the first undergraduate arts management programs in the country. She also holds master's degrees in organizational behavior and business administration. Colleen spent five years at the Illinois Arts Council, a state grant-making agency that supports Illinois arts organizations and artists. Ultimately, she managed the agency's arts in education programs, which helped bring performing and visual artists to schools and communities across the state. That was followed by twenty-five years in higher education, much of it devoted to working with faculty on grant development and research administration. Colleen spent more than three years conducting research and visiting theaters, festivals, gardens, museums, libraries, and historic sites across the country while she was writing Finding Shakespeare in America. In the course of this research, she became an expert on American Shakespeare gardens. Finding Shakespeare in America is the first in a series of travel guides featuring the best of the British Isles in the United States. Colleen is currently working on Finding Scotland in America and Finding Ireland in America, which will be followed by Finding England in America. She also writes a monthly column called Eating British in America for Anglotopia that highlights great places to find English, Scottish, Welsh, and Irish food in the United States.
