049: Caroline Bicks - Stephen E. King Chair In Literature, "Monsters In the Archives" author

Caroline Bicks is a Shakespeare scholar and the inaugural Stephen E. King Chair in Literature at the University of Maine, a position which led her to being the first scholar granted extended access to King's private archives. The process of her close reading and study of early manuscripts led to her writing MONSTERS IN THE ARCHIVES, out now from Hogarth. We chat about her family's supporting her intellectual pursuits, even as a child, and her experiences with anxiety as a young person anti-intellectualism based in classist narratives the language of Stephen King's fiction and why it works Shakespeare and King as messengers of humanity, rather than horror why Harold Bluhm was a turd and King. A lot about King, because we both love his writing. Go to https://carolinebicks.com/ to check out more of Caroline's work, grab a copy of MONSTERS IN THE ARCHIVES if you want to dive into King's writing and learn more about his early drafts of some great novels and short stories, as well as read about Caroline's journey into those stories and her own life. You can pick the book up at the Bookshop.org affiliate link in the show notes if you want to support the show. Thank you so much to Caroline for stopping by! - - -  Follow my Substack, where I publish short fiction and more at https://substack.com/@austinrwilson Please rate and review Ledger wherever you can - Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, etc. - and tell people if you think they'd like it. Swing by austinRwilson.com to see my publishing credits, to contact me, or to read free fiction. Links to all my work can be found here: https://linktr.ee/austinRwilson including my Patreon where you can get Shibboleth: Some Call It Fiction, a fictional underground newspaper of UFO sightings, the strange and unknown, and some stories sprinkled in from reality, but tweaked by fiction. All written by me, NO LLM/AI SLOP, and that includes the art. Original art by Luca Vassallo, Seth Hahne, Andrea Atwood, and more. Follow the show through our Instagram account @MossHeartBooks and order books through our website or our Affiliate link on Bookshop.org. MONSTERS IN THE ARCHIVES is available through an affiliate link here: https://bookshop.org/a/107245/9780593736722 Thank you so much!