This month on Conversations from the Pointed Firs, host Peter Neill speaks with author Caroline Bicks, discussing her latest book, "Monsters in the Archives: My Year of Fear with Stephen King" which chronicles what she discovered when the Master of Horror granted her extended access to his private archives. And she shares stories of the year she spent reading never-before-studied drafts of his most iconic stories. Today King calls it “the best book about my process that I have ever read.”

Caroline Bicks is the Stephen E. King Chair in Literature at the University of Maine. Her previous books include Cognition and Girlhood in Shakespeare’s World; Shakespeare Not Stirred: Cocktails for Your Everyday Dramas (co-authored with Michelle Ephraim); and Midwiving Subjects in Shakespeare’s England. Her creative nonfiction has been featured in the Modern Love column of the New York Times and McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, She is also the co- host and co-creator of the Webby-Honored Everyday Shakespeare podcast. Her latest book, Monsters in the Archives: My Year of Fear with Stephen King (Hogarth, 2026), is available at your local bookseller and wherever you shop for books online.