Marlena Williams is a writer and lawyer from Portland, Oregon. She is the author of the essay collection Night Mother: A Personal and Cultural History of The Exorcist. You can find her other work in the Yale Review, Electric Literature, Catapult, Literary Hub, Witness, and elsewhere.
Get in touch.
Night Mother: A Personal and Cultural History of The Exorcist is available on Bookshop.org, Powells.com, or Amazon.
Night Mother Press
Night Mother is a finalist for the Oregon Book Award! - Literary Arts
Portland writer explores personal grief, cultural impact of the Exorcist - Oregon Public Broadcasting
Marked as Monster: A Conversation Between Marlena Williams and S. Trimble - The Los Angeles Review of Books
“Rarely Does a Film Cause National Hysteria": The Exorcist Turns 50 - The Guardian
This Author’s Mother Banned Her From Seeing The Exorcist, Now She’s Written a Book About It - Boise State Public Radio
Night Mother: A Personal and Cultural History of the Exorcist [Starred Review] - Library Journal
Night Mother: A Personal and Cultural History of the Exorcist [Review] - Publisher’s Weekly
Exorcising the Exorcist [Review] - Inside Higher Ed
Why The Exorcist Still Haunts Us 50 Years Later - The Millions
What Does Playing the Devil Incarnate Do to a Young Girl? [Excerpt] - Literary Hub
New Books in Popular Culture Podcast [Interview] - New Books Network
New Orleans writer Marlena Williams’ ‘Night Mother’ explores the horror film ‘The Exorcist’ and more - The Gambit
Night Mother: A Personal and Cultural History of The Exorcist [Review] - Hippocampus
Author Q&A: An Interview with Marlena Williams - The Washington Independent Review of Books
Martin Luther King on Steroids? Meet a Perfect MAGA Mirror [Review in Frank Bruni Newsletter]- The New York Times
Select Published Work
A Planned Black Bear Hunt Could Destroy Nearly 40 Years of Conservation - Sierra Magazine
Cars Harm Animals-Could Wildlife Crossings Be a Solution? - Sentient
Santa Anita - Witness Magazine
Factory Farms Are Sourcing Their Cheap Labor From Prisons - Sentient Media
Variant of Uncertain Significance - Catapult
Why Didn’t We Notice the Man Convicted of Alice Sebold’s Rape was Innocent? - Electric Literature
My Mother and The Exorcist - The Yale Review
The Problem with Pop Culture’s Love of Wrongful Conviction Narratives - Electric Literature
Sylvia Plath…Nature Writer? - Literary Hub
Film Work
The Recall - Documentary Short - Consulting Producer
Tribute City - Documentary Short - Director and Producer