Alumna E. Jay Gilbert publishes Haunted: ghost stories and their afterlives

Exeter College alumna E. Jay Gilbert (2009, MSt English) has a book entitled Haunted: ghost stories and their afterlives forthcoming with Manila Press (part of Bonnier Books).

‘Part-chilling tale, part-memoir, part-cultural exploration,’ the book is a treatment of ghost-story telling in the British Isles, laying bare its fascinating history with an eye toward how these stories ‘reflect the communities in which they originate, and how they are similar to and different from similar stories from across the world’. The volume ultimately asks, ‘why are we so fascinated by ghost stories and what do they tell us about the community and people who cultivate them?’

Gilbert is originally from the Northeast of England (a small village outside of Newcastle), where her interest in local tales of the supernatural has been cultivated for years. She holds an MA and MSt from Oxford (the latter of which she obtained at Exeter, the former from St Hilda’s) and PhD from the University of Leicester. She is trained as a ‘linguistic archaeologist’, a discipline that makes use of archival records to study the evolution of language, with a special interest in the dialects of northern England. She is also an accomplished poet and fiction writer, with work longlisted for the Bath Flash Fiction Award.

The book’s release is set for 12 September and can be found through Blackwell’s bookshop and other booksellers.