Name: Nevermore: A Haunted Literary Reading (AWP Offsite Event)
Start: 2026-03-05T18:00:00-05:00
End: 2026-03-05T19:45:00-05:00
Location: Lord Baltimore Hotel

Nevermore: A Haunted Literary Reading (AWP Offsite Event)

Join us for an evening of haunted fiction, in the theater of the (reputedly) haunted Lord Baltimore Hotel, just blocks from where Edgar Allen Poe is buried. Candles flicker, masquerade masks are donned, Poe’s Raven makes an appearance, all while we listen to the words of celebrated writers of speculative, ghostly, and haunted prose: Carmen Maria Machado, Sequoia Nagamatsu, GennaRose Nethercott, and Matthew Lansburgh. Hosted by writers Joy Baglio and Jennifer Pullen. Sponsored by Pioneer Valley Writers’ Workshop.
After the reading, the veil between the worlds will lift even more as attendees have the option of joining a specially-discounted* ghost tour of the hotel, departing from the theater, by Vince Wilson of Poe’s Magic Theater! (*Tickets are $10 and will be available for reservation soon. Spots are limited.)

Featured Authors

CARMEN MARIA MACHADO is the author of the bestselling memoir In the Dream House and the award-winning short story collection Her Body and Other Parties. She has been a finalist for the National Book Award and the winner of the Bard Fiction Prize, the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction, the Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ Nonfiction, the Brooklyn Public Library Literature Prize, the Shirley Jackson Award, and the National Book Critics Circle's John Leonard Prize. In 2018, the New York Times listed Her Body and Other Parties as a member of "The New Vanguard," one of "15 remarkable books by women that are shaping the way we read and write fiction in the 21st century." Her essays, fiction, and criticism have appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, Granta, Vogue, This American Life, Harper’s Bazaar, Tin House, McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, The Believer, Guernica, Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy, Best American Nonrequired Reading, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and has been awarded fellowships and residencies from the Guggenheim Foundation, Yaddo, Hedgebrook, and the Millay Colony for the Arts.

SEQUOIA NAGAMATSU is the author of the National Bestselling novel, How High We Go In The Dark (2022), a New York Times Editors’ Choice, and the story collection, Where We Go When All We Were Is Gone(2016). His work has appeared in publications such as Conjunctions, The Southern Review, ZYZZYVA, Tin House, Iowa Review, Lightspeed Magazine, and One World: A Global Anthology of Short Stories, and has been listed as notable in Best American Non-Required Reading and the Best Horror of the Year. Other honors include a fellowship from the Bread Loaf Writers Conference and shortlist inclusions for The Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize, the Ursula K Le Guin Prize (finalist), and the Barnes & Noble Discover Prize, as well as long list inclusions for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, The Dublin Literary Award, and the PEN/Hemingway Award. He was educated at Grinnell College (BA) and Southern Illinois University-Carbondale (MFA), and he teaches creative writing at Saint Olaf College and the Rainier Writing Workshop Low-Residency MFA program. He is originally from O’ahu, Hawaiʻi and the San Francisco Bay Area and currently lives in Minneapolis with his wife, the writer Cole Nagamatsu, their cat Kalahira, their real dog Fenris, and a Sony Aibo robot dog named Calvino. He is at work on two other novels.

GENNAROSE NETHERCOTT is the author of a novel, Thistlefoot, and a short story collection, Fifty Beasts to Break Your Heart. A writer and folklorist alike, she helps create the podcast Lore, and she tours nationally and internationally performing strange tales (sometimes with puppets in tow). Her first book, a narrative poem entitled “The Lumberjack’s Dove,” was selected by Louise Glück as a winner of the National Poetry Series. She lives in the woodlands of Vermont, beside an old cemetery.

MATTHEW LANSBURGH’s collection of linked stories, Outside Is the Ocean, won the Iowa Short Fiction Award and was a finalist for the 30th Annual Lambda Literary Award and the Ferro-Grumley Award for LGBTQ Fiction. His fiction has appeared in journals such as One Story, VQR, New England Review, Ecotone, Epoch, and Electric Literature's Recommended Reading, and has been shortlisted in the Best American Short Stories series and the Pushcart Prize series. Matthew received his MFA from NYU and has received fellowships from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, MacDowell, and Yaddo.

JOY DEVA BAGLIO (co-host) is the founder of Pioneer Valley Writers’ Workshop. Her short stories are widely published in journals such as One Story, Ploughshares, The Missouri Review, The Iowa Review, American Short Fiction, and Tin House, among others. She’s received scholarships, fellowships, grants, and residencies from Yaddo, Ragdale, Vermont Studio Center, The Kerouac Project, The Porches, Bread Loaf Writers Conference, and Sewanee Writers Conference, among others. She lives in Northampton MA, where she can also be found going on long runs and playing the bagpipes.

Co-host JENNIFER PULLEN's chapbook, A Bead of Amber on Her Tongue, won the Omnidawn Fabulist Fiction Award. Her book Fantasy Fiction: A Writer’s Guide and Anthology (Bloomsbury Academic) is the first comprehensive history of fantasy and craft guide. Additionally, she edited Beastly: An Anthology of Shapeshifting Fairy Tales for Lanternfish Press, and her debut novel, Once Upon a Burning World is upcoming from Meerkat Press. She grew up running wild in the forests of Washington State but has since been sufficiently domesticated to become an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Ohio Northern University.