Screech Owl Serenade

You won't find Lilith, first wife of Adam, in most versions of the Bible. In fact, finding her in canonized Christian works is difficult at best. By the time of the King James Version, she had been reduced to being symbolized by a screech owl in Psalms. Nevertheless, she remains a towering pop-culture figure, a mythological beacon of light that draws feminists to her story and the psycho-sexual undercurrents of her early expulsion from Eden. Lilith Unbound, a collection of stories in some way dealing with Lilith, is due this month from Popcorn Press. Edited by Elaine Cunningham, the collection brings together stories from a variety of literary genres. It features my short horror story Screech Owl Serenade, a grim modern Biblical fable set in a welfare-class tenement apartment building. Eden has never been such a desperate place.