In this interview, we chat with Caroline Bicks about combatting AI in the classroom, words clanging on readers’ ears, the uniquely portable magic of fiction, and so much more.
Caroline Bicks is the author of several academic books, including Cognition and Girlhood in Shakespeare’s World and Midwiving Subjects in Shakespeare’s England. After she was named the University of Maine’s inaugural Stephen E. King Chair in Literature, she became the first scholar to be granted extended access by Stephen King to his private archive. In her most recent book, Monsters in the Archives: My Year of Fear with Stephen King, Bicks documents her exploration of King’s early drafts and hand-written revisions, and her conversations with King about those changes. Her popular writing has appeared in the Modern Love column of the New York Times and McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. She is the co-host of the Everyday Shakespeare podcast.
Books, plays, stories, and poems mentioned in this episode:
- The Wizard of Oz — L. Frank Baum
- I Know a Place: Rest Stop and Other Dark Detours — Nat Cassidy
- “Cherrylog Road” — James Dickey
- “The Boogeyman”; Carrie; Cell; “Children of the Corn”; Christine; Cujo; Danse Macabre; “The Dark Man”; The Dead Zone; Insomnia; It; “Jerusalem’s Lot”; Lisey’s Story; The Long Walk; Misery; Night Shift; “Night Surf”; On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft; Pet Sematary; Rage; ‘Salem’s Lot; The Shining; The Stand; “Strawberry Spring” — Stephen King
- Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life — Anne Lamott
- Edward II — Christopher Marlowe
- North Woods — Daniel Mason
- A Swim in the Pond in the Rain — George Saunders
- Hamlet; Henry IV, Part I; Henry IV; Part II; Henry V; Henry VI, Part I; Henry VI, Part II; Henry VI, Part III; Macbeth; Richard II; Richard III; Romeo and Juliet — William Shakespeare
- Charlotte’s Web — E. B. White
- Our Town — Thornton Wilder
- How Fiction Works — James Wood
Mike Thorn 