Marlena Williams is a writer 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, Sentient Media, and elsewhere. She is currently at law school in New Orleans, Louisiana.
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
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
Select Published Work
Santa Anita - Witness Magazine
8 Key Laws Under Threat from the EATS Act - Sentient Media
A Brief History of Milk Ads Reveals Big Dairy Has Always Struggled - Sentient Media
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