There is something so SCARY about this story.i am rattled. The real monsters, scarier than those in any horror story, are among us every day. It is honestly and truly the scariest thing in the world that this story was written in the 1940s, when it not only could have been written now but believably happened today. PROJECT 4: THE LOTTERY AND OTHER STORIES BY SHIRLEY JACKSON PROJECT 3: 18 BEST STORIES BY EDGAR ALLAN POE

PROJECT 2: HER BODY AND OTHER PARTIES BY CARMEN MARIA MACHADO PROJECT 1: THE COMPLETE STORIES BY FLANNERY O'CONNOR also i want to give her a hug (both because i love her writing and because she seems like she needs one) This one, by my creepy queen shirley jackson, is one i have been worryingly excited about. To accomplish this, i'm going to work my way through the collected stories of various authors, reading + reviewing 1 story every day until i get bored / lose every single follower / am struck down by a vengeful deity. In case you somehow missed parts one and two and three clogging your feed for the past 2 months, here's the situation:

In 1965, Jackson died of heart failure in her sleep, at her home in North Bennington Vermont, at the age of 48.

Jackson may even have taken pleasure in the subversive impact of her work, as revealed by Hyman's statement that she 'was always proud that the Union of South Africa banned The Lottery', and she felt that they at least understood the story'. She believed that her books would speak for her clearly enough over the years.' Hyman insisted the darker aspects of Jackson's works were not, as some critics claimed, the product of 'personal, even neurotic, fantasies', but that Jackson intended, as 'a sensitive and faithful anatomy of our times, fitting symbols for our distressing world of the concentration camp and the Bomb', to mirror humanity's Cold War-era fears. Jackson's husband, the literary critic Stanley Edgar Hyman, wrote in his preface to a posthumous anthology of her work that 'she consistently refused to be interviewed, to explain or promote her work in any fashion, or to take public stands and be the pundit of the Sunday supplements. In her critical biography of Shirley Jackson, Lenemaja Friedman notes that when Shirley Jackson's story 'The Lottery' was published in the June 28, 1948, issue of The New Yorker, it received a response that 'no New Yorker story had ever received.' Hundreds of letters poured in that were characterized by, as Jackson put it, 'bewilderment, speculation and old-fashioned abuse.' She is best known for her dystopian short story, 'The Lottery' (1948), which suggests there is a deeply unsettling underside to bucolic, smalltown America. She has influenced such writers as Stephen King, Nigel Kneale, and Richard Matheson.

A popular writer in her time, her work has received increasing attention from literary critics in recent years. Shirley Jackson was an influential American author.

The Lottery by Shirley Jackson