Charis welcomes Gwendolyn Kiste in conversation with Addie Tsai for a celebration of their respective novels, Reluctant Immortals and Unwieldy Creatures, each of which takes cues from classic works of horror literature and remixes them to make new feminist meanings. Reluctant Immortals (Kiste) is a novel inspired by the untold stories of forgotten women in classic literatureโfrom Lucy Westnera, a victim of Stokerโs Dracula, and Bertha Mason, Mr. Rochesterโs attic-bound wife in Charlotte Brontรซโs Jane Eyreโas they band together to combat the toxic men bent on destroying their lives, set against the backdrop of the Summer of Love, Haight-Ashbury, 1967. Unwieldy Creatures (Tsai) is a biracial, queer, gender-swapped retelling of Mary Shelley’s classic novel Frankenstein.
