Reframes postwar American literary fiction through the work of Leigh Brackett, Shirley Jackson, and Patricia Highsmith, arguing that recognizing genre play as literary skill is essential for a more inclusive canon.
Ashley Lawson is Associate Professor of English at West Virginia Wesleyan College. Her research centers on twentieth-century American literature and women's creativity. She has published essays on Zelda Fitzgerald, Dawn Powell, Shirley Jackson, Sara Haardt, and Estelle Faulkner. In addition to these specialties, her teaching interests include Iranian and Japanese women writers, femmes fatales, and the American gothic.