In this episode, novelist and poet Kathleen Rooney joins hosts Catherine Nichols and Elisa Gabbert to discuss Robert Aickman's 1988 collection of stories The Wine-Dark Sea, with particular focus on the title story and the uncanny dollhouse story "The Inner Room." Aickman's work is often characterized as horror fiction, but he preferred the term "strange stories." His stories take the reader imperceptibly across the gauzy line between mundane reality and surreal terror. As one of his characters says: "Dreams are misleading because they make life seem real."
Kathleen Rooney is the author of nine books of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. Her most recent novel is Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey. She is also the author of the national bestseller Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk and The Listening Room: A Novel of Georgette and Loulou Magritte. She is also a founding editor of Rose Metal Press, a nonprofit publisher of literary work in hybrid genres, and a founding member of Poems While You Wait.
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