Monsters, haunted houses and moods, descents into hells both real and supernatural... Our love of horror has already been studied extensively but it still fascinates us: why do we love frights, horror and sometimes even gore? Is it because, as Rafael Llopis put it, just as we have a sexual drive, we have a death drive that leads us to carry out controlled cathartic experiments? Is it because Gothic horror, cosmic and morbid horror, body horror and folk horror, even horror and darkness for young people, have codes that help us understand ourselves and our surroundings? To examine what literary fear has to offer us, and what bodies, traumas and ghosts lie beneath its surface, we’ll turn to three women with an unparalleled command of these devices from three different angles: American author Lisa Tuttle, creator of great horror stories that have won her awards such as the Campbell and the Nebula (refused); Irish professor Bernice M. Murphy, specialist in American Gothic fiction and recently featured in the documentary Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched: A History of Folk Horror; and horror author Catriona Ward, winner of the August Derleth and Shirley Jackson awards and author of The Last House on Needless Street, who’s coming to the 42 Festival with her latest work Looking Glass Sound, about a New England author and murderer.

Guests:

Lisa Tuttle

Catriona Ward

Bernice M. Murphy

Moderator:

Daniel Pérez Castrillón

*Simultaneous interpreting into Catalan available