ABOUT BARDSY

Bardsy is your gateway to better storytelling. Unlock your writing potential with flexible curricula, interactive resources, professional guidance and a uniquely supportive community.

Not another writing website: your fully integrated, end-to-end platform

What separates Bardsy from the crowd? We’ve got the total package, propelling you from that first lightbulb moment all the way to “The End.” We are equal parts favorite teacher and best friend, guiding the way and standing at your side to push you to succeed. We’ll do whatever it takes to get you writing, keep you writing and help you write better. Whether it’s tools, ideas or lesson plans, we have it. And we have the best.
Greatness is in our name, a nod to the most famous bard of all, William Shakespeare. You could say we’re pretty big fans—our co-founder even wrote a best-selling book about him, Who Was William Shakespeare? The bard himself penned over a hundred top-notch stories, and so can you. Great storytelling is magical. Bardsy will make you a magician. Grab your imaginary cape (or literal, we’re not judging), and start writing today.

Bardsy’s founders are pros who eat, sleep and breathe writing

A life-long bibliophile, Celeste Davidson always dreamed of being a writer. When her daughters were little, she couldn’t stand how insipid most children’s books were, so she wrote her own. Her debut was a best-seller, and her kids eventually followed in her storytelling footsteps with success of their own. Celeste then turned to empowering young writers who aren’t lucky enough to have authors as mothers.
Meanwhile, frustrated by the limitations of his professorial gig and academic research, Adam Simon's interest in building community through storytelling led him to join forces with Celeste. Like yin and yang, Adam broke out his virtual hammer and built the website while Celeste developed our creative writing courses. Their brainchild is Bardsy’s unique Prospero, a set of interactive writing tools and templates that help anyone—and we mean anyone (even a caveman)—build stories. The rest is history.

Meet Celeste, the wise mentor in your success story

CELESTE BOOKS
The hairs on the back of Celeste’s neck stood up when she discovered creative writing “experts” were teachers without writing experience, writers without teaching experience or, even worse, post-pubescent Ed Tech “entrepreneurs” without either. That’s like being taught driver’s ed by someone without a license. Or a car! She decided to roll her sleeves up and take matters into her own hands with Bardsy.
Want to know how to write a bestseller? Celeste wrote one of the most widely read books on Shakespeare, Who Was William Shakespeare? (Grosset & Dunlap). That’s 500,000 copies in a dozen languages. She’s also written several other award-winning titles, including One Leaf Rides the Wind (Viking) and Julia Morgan Built a Castle (also Viking). She walks the walk, and can whip your story into fighting form to have a shot at winning awards and cracking best-seller lists too.

Meet Adam, who's cracked your perfect writing platform's code

Adam is Bardsy’s head geek, complete with the chunky glasses. A sneaky social scientist, he turned the lessons he learned teaching political psychology at UCLA, the University of Washington and Yale into the tracks, tools and writing strategies that motivate you, keep you going and turn your stories into stories of success. An MIT dropout, he also supervises all the boring stuff that makes the site run. We’re glad to have a true techie on board to save us from dreaded 404 errors.
But wait, you didn't think we’d let any non-writers in here, did you? (If so, go back to start; do not pass go.) Adam has two books under his belt, The Winning Message (Cambridge University Press) and Mass Informed Consent (Rowman and Littlefield), as well as too many peer-reviewed articles. Now he’s designing the tools that he wished were around when he was working on his books. And, after that, maybe a time travel machine.
ADAM BOOKS