On this episode of Meet Your Maker, Brian is joined by Aimee Pokwatka to talk about her novel Accumulation and the link between horror and joy.

Pokwatka distinguishes pleasure from deeper joy and argues horror places us in “communion with terror,” reminding us of death, grief, and shared human vulnerability in ways that can be sustaining.

She connects this to parenting and domestic life, recalling living in Newtown during the school shooting while nursing her infant.

Pokwatka explains Accumulation’s haunted-house frame as a flexible metaphor for women’s labor, repetition, doubt, and entrapment—including financial constraints—while noting her real house, a found doll, and a sighting of a ghost informed the novel.

http://www.aimeepokwatka.com/