Known to millions primarily as the author of “The Lottery,” Shirley Jackson (1916–1965) has until recently been curiously absent from the mainstream American literary canon. A genius of literary suspense and psychological horror, Jackson plumbed the cultural anxiety of postwar America in novels such as The Haunting of Hill House (1959) and We Have Always Lived in the Castle (1962). Placing Jackson in the tradition of Hawthorne and Poe, Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life argues that Jackson’s unique contribution to her genre came from her focus on domestic horror, with novels and memoirs chronicling the exploitation and desperate isolation of women in American society. With archival documents and other rare materials from Jackson’s private life, Ruth Franklin’s talk will give a behind-the-scenes glimpse of the creation of her acclaimed biography, illuminating her subject in a new way.