The first novel in fifteen years from acclaimed author Maile Chapman, The Spoil is “psychological horror like you’ve never encountered it” (Alissa Nutting).

As a young girl growing up on the outskirts of Tacoma in the 1970s, Mandy is preoccupied by the paranormal phenomena she reads about in magazines: alien visitations, ESP, the Bermuda Triangle. Meanwhile, she and her stepbrother grow increasingly convinced that a malevolent presence resides in their rambling, split-level house, and they develop elaborate strategies to live with it. Years later, in a modern townhouse in Las Vegas, Mandy is caring for her mother, who is in terminal decline from Alzheimer’s. While digging through a box of her mother’s things, she sets something loose. Something old and baleful: a demon that soon possesses one of her neighbors. What follows is a gripping and often terrifying story of familial grief in which the past is both elusive and paralyzing, and daily realities give way to mysteries between science and spirit.

Maile Chapman worked on The Spoil during her 2010-2011 Fellowship at the Library’s Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers. She will discuss her book with writer Larissa MacFarquhar.

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ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Maile Chapman is the author of Your Presence Is Requested at Suvanto, a finalist for the Guardian First Book Award and the PEN Center USA Literary Award. She teaches in the English and Creative Writing International Program at University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Larissa MacFarquhar is the author of Strangers Drowning: Impossible Idealism, Drastic Choices, and the Urge to Help. She is a staff writer at the New Yorker and was the Dorothy Cullman Fellow at the Cullman Center in 2010-2011.

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ACCESSIBILITY

In-Person | Assistive listening devices and/or hearing loops are available at the venue. You can request a free ASL (American Sign Language) interpretation or CART (Communication Access Real-Time Translation) captioning service at least two weeks in advance of the event: please submit your request via this form. This venue is fully accessible to wheelchairs. 

Livestream | Captions and a transcript will be provided. Media used over the course of the conversation will be accompanied by alt text and/or audio description. You can request a free ASL (American Sign Language) interpretation at least two weeks in advance of the event: please submit your request via this form.

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The Cullman Center is made possible by a generous endowment from Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman in honor of Brooke Russell Astor, with major support provided by Mrs. John L. Weinberg, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, The Estate of Charles J. Liebman, The von der Heyden Family Foundation, John and Constance Birkelund, and The Samuel I. Newhouse Foundation, and with additional gifts from Helen and Roger Alcaly, The Rona Jaffe Foundation, The Arts and Letters Foundation Inc., William W. Karatz, Merilee and Roy Bostock, and Cullman Center Fellows.