The Death and Life of Edgar Allan Poe with Mark Dawidziak (Virtual)

In his new biography of Edgar Allan Poe, Mystery of Mysteries, Mark Dawidziak examines the renowned author’s life through the prism of his mysterious death and its many possible causes. In a compelling dual-timeline narrative alternating between Poe’s increasingly desperate last months and his brief but impactful life, Mark Dawidziak sheds new light on the enigmatic master of macabre. 

Tickets: $5.00 per digital stream; REGISTER HERE. 

 Copies of Mystery of Mysteries are available for purchase through the Mark Twain Store; proceeds benefit The Mark Twain House & Museum. Books will be shipped after the event. We regret that we are NOT able to ship books outside the United States as it is cost-prohibitive to do so. 

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 About the Author: 

 Mark Dawidziak is the author or editor of 25 books, including three studies of landmark television series: The Columbo Phile: A Casebook, The Night Stalker Companion and Everything I Need to Know I Learned in the The Twilight Zone, his lighthearted 2017 tribute to Rod Serling’s classic anthology series. He also is an internationally recognized Mark Twain scholar, and five of his books are about the iconic American writer. He has been portraying Twain on stage for more than 40 years. No less an authority than Ken Burns has said, “Nobody gets Mark Twain the way Mark Dawidziak does.” His most recent book is the biography A Mystery of Mysteries: The Death and Life of Edgar Allan Poe. 

 Born in New York, Dawidziak spent 43 years as a television, film, and theater critic at such newspapers as the Akron Beacon Journal and the Cleveland Plain Dealer. In 2015, he was inducted into the Press Club of Cleveland Journalism Hall of Fame. 

 He also is the author of the 1994 horror novel Grave Secrets, as well as such non-fiction books as The Barter Theatre Story: Love Made Visible, The Bedside, Bathtub and Armchair Companion to Dracula and The Shawshank Redemption Revealed: How One Story Keeps Hope Alive, a 2019 deep-dive look at the beloved film based on a novella by Stephen King. He also is the editor of three volumes of works by celebrated Twilight Zone contributor Richard Matheson, who mentioned Dawidziak in the dedications to two of his books. 

About the Moderator: 

Jordan Costanza is a third-year Ph.D. student in Literary Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her primary research interest is American Gothic literature, with an emphasis on Edgar Allan Poe. Her current research examines the relationship between the Gothic and religious mythology as well as how various American Gothic writers deploy mythographic models as frames through which to explore sex, gender, and violence. 

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Programs at The Mark Twain House & Museum are made possible in part by support from CT Humanities; the Connecticut Department of Economic and Community Development, Office of the Arts; Ensworth Charitable Foundation, Bank of America, N.A., Trustee; the Greater Hartford Arts Council’s United Arts Campaign; The Hartford; The Mark Twain Foundation; The National Endowment for the Humanities; and Travelers.