In 2019, 17-year-old Emy McGuire stumbled across a haunting ballad, "The Legend of Anne Bonny," by European songwriter Karliene. The song, part of an entire album about the infamous Irish pirate, struck "like a lightning bolt."

“I knew instantly it had to be a musical,” McGuire recalls. Until that moment, she had never considered writing one. But she felt that the story of an unapologetic woman forging her own path through history deserved a stage.

That burst of inspiration soon turned into a years-long creative voyage. McGuire dove into researching Bonny’s life and the turbulent final years of the Golden Age of Piracy, all while juggling high school coursework.

By the time she was studying at New College of Florida, she had written ten songs for the project, which caught the attentio

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