Shirley Jackson

(1916 - 1965)

The novelist, playwright, and children’s author claimed that through witchcraft she could bring kitchen utensils to the top of a drawer by calling to them. The publication of “The Lottery” in The New Yorker generated more mail than the magazine had ever received for any single manuscript. Jackson said of the letters that they reflected, “bewilderment, speculation, and old-fashioned abuse.”