Mary Ellen von der Heyden Lecture

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In this talk, writer Carmen Maria Machado discusses her novel-in-progress, Holy Shiver, adapted from the concept of the heiliger Schauer in medieval German poetry. The novel, set in the near-future United States, follows two lovers as they negotiate pleasure and power against a backdrop of homophobia, cultural decline, and political danger. As the lovers interview their neighbors about their mental states, the grip of fascism closes in around all of them. Machado discusses the topics she researched for her roving, eclectic novel: cults, pandemics, children’s literature, lesbian love, ecstatic visions, ecological dystopia, authoritarian censorship, medieval mystics, and ecstatic visions.

Carmen Machado holds a BA in visual media from American University and an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Machado is the author of four books: the award-winning short-story collection Her Body and Other Parties (Graywolf Press, 2017), the bestselling experimental memoir In the Dream House (Graywolf Press, 2019), the graphic novel The Law, Low Woods (DC Comics, 2021), and the forthcoming linked story collection A Brief and Fearful Star (Knopf, 2027). Her essays, fiction, and criticism have appeared in the New Yorker, New York Times, Granta, Vogue, “This American Life,” Harper’s Bazaar, Tin House, McSweeney’s, The Believer, Guernica, Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy, Best American Nonrequired Reading, and elsewhere. She is the winner of the Bard Fiction Prize, Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction, Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ Nonfiction, Brooklyn Public Library Literature Prize, Shirley Jackson Award, National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize, and has been a finalist for the National Book Award. Machado has held fellowships and residencies from the Guggenheim Foundation, Yaddo, Hedgebrook, and the Millay Colony for the Arts. She was also an Abrams Artist in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania and currently a visiting associate professor at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.