When Caroline Bicks left her tenure track position at Boston College to become the Stephen E. King Chair in Literature at the University of Maine in 2017, her colleagues warned the noted Shakespeare scholar that she’d likely never meet the bestselling novelist.

Eventually, however, Bicks did strike up a friendship with King and his wife, Tabitha. In 2022, the Kings granted her access to their private archive of manuscript drafts and other materials.

Bicks’ book, Monsters in the Archives: My Year of Fear with Stephen King, describes what she learned about the creation of classic works from The  Shining to Carrie. She will discuss her findings with Laura Miller, Slate.com books and culture columnist.

Free event

Caroline Bicks is an internationally-recognized Shakespeare scholar who has published widely on early modern drama, gender, and the history of science. She studied Renaissance poetry at Harvard University as an undergraduate and received her Phd in English Literature from Stanford University.  In 2017, she became the inaugural Stephen E. King Chair in Literature  at the University of Maine. The endowed Chair’s mission is to support the public humanities, a challenge that Bicks has embraced by giving talks around the state to a wide variety of audiences, and bringing award-winning fiction writers, journalists, educators, and activists to speak and work with different Maine communities. The position also allowed her to develop a working relationship with Stephen King that led to him granting her access to his personal papers and to her writing a book about what she discovered, Monsters in the Archives: My Year of Fear with Stephen King. Bicks’s award-winning blog, “Everyday Shakespeare,” was the inspiration for her humorous book, Shakespeare, Not Stirred: Cocktails for Your Everyday Dramas, co-authored with Michelle Ephraim. In April 2023, they launched their Webby-Award honored Everyday Shakespeare podcast, where they use their talents as educators and entertainers to deliver fresh, funny insights into how Shakespeare’s world connects to ours.

Laura Miller is books and culture columnist for Slate.com and a member of the Word festival steering committee.