Holly Luhning

Event Info: This Is Not The Shakespeare Stage at 2:00 PM

Holly Luhning was raised in rural Saskatchewan but has also called New Brunswick, Montreal and now Toronto home. She holds a PhD, specializing in eighteenth-century literature, madness, and theories of the body. Her poetry and academic writing has appeared in radio, journals and anthologies. She has received a Saskatchewan Lieutenant-Governor's Arts Award and her collection of poetry, Sway, was nominated for a Saskatchewan Book Award.

Books

Quiver

In sixteenth-century Hungary, Countess Elizabeth Bathory tortured and killed over 600 servant girls in order to bathe in their blood. She believed this practice would keep her skin youthful and her beauty immortal. Quiver is a decadent novel that explores this historical figure, and reimagines the story through the eyes of Danica, a young forensic psychologist. Danica works at a former insane asylum-turned-forensic hospital where one of her patients is Martin Foster, a man imprisoned for murdering a fourteen-year old girl. Foster is both menacing and fascinating to Danica and she soon begins to suspect that he may be the head of a gothic cabal that is re-enacting the sixteenth century murders. Quiver chronicles thedark history behind the relentless torture of young women and the twisted relationship that unfolds between Danica and the imprisoned predator that idolizes Countess Bathory.