Dorothea Lasky’s “The Shining” and Anna Biller’s “Bluebeard’s Castle”

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A LARB Radio Hour double-header Halloween horror special. In the first half, Kate Wolf is joined by the poet Dorothea Lasky to discuss her most recent poetry collection, The Shining. The book is an ekphrastic ode to Stanley Kubrick’s classic film, based on the novel by Stephen King. Its poems remix and reimagine the haunted spaces and uncanny elements of King and Kubrick’s story in a uniquely personal register, and from a feminist perspective, touching on violence, time, identity, isolation, and creative ghosts. Then filmmaker Anna Biller speaks with Kate and Medaya Ocher about her first book, Bluebeard’s Castle, a traditional romance and horror novel that pays homage to the genre while turning it inside out. The book follows a romance writer named Judith who falls in love with Gavin, a man who seems too good to be true. He’s aristocratic, rich, handsome and cultured. It is, of course, all very erotic and very misleading. The relationship is both enthralling and as we quickly begin to see, violent and abusive.