Imagine a place where the townsfolk gather in anticipation of the annual lottery. The winner is picked...and subsequently stoned to death.

Welcome to the world of Shirley Jackson, where things are not always what they seem. The evil that lies within everyone, hiding between the seemingly ordinary and normal, is a prevalent idea throughout Jackson’s works of fiction.

Much of Jackson’s work is TWILIGHT ZONE or alternative-reality. Society, conformity, paranoia, identity are common themes, and her stories speak about who we are and what kind of world we really live in. She explores themes of psychological turmoil, isolation, prejudice and the inequity of fate. Many of Jackson’s works take place in the small, xenophobic towns of New England where she and her husband wrote and taught.

Jackson is perhaps best known for her dystopian short story, “The Lottery”, first published by The New Yorker in 1948. By contrasting commonplace details of contemporary life with a barbaric ritual killing, the story suggests there is a deeply unsettling underside to bucolic, small town America. Reaction to the story was so strong and intense that it initially was blamed for thousands of subscription cancellations and it took its place among the 30 most-often banned literary works in American schools and libraries. However, today it is widely recognized as a classic American short story and is taught in schools throughout the United States. We invite filmmakers to come to us with their modern interpretations of this iconic work.

Other signature Jackson properties available include:

• Hangsaman: A co-ed develops a relationship with what turns out to be her imaginary friend, while working through the hidden trauma of child abuse.
• The Bird’s Nest: A woman suffers from multiple-personality disorder.
• “The Daemon Lover”: A woman wakes to find her lover gone. Literally. So she searches for this “player”, wondering if he even existed at all.
• “The Honeymoon of Mrs. Smith”: A lonely woman hastily marries a man who may or may not be a serial killer, and his former wives may or may not be buried in the basement.
• “Indians Live in Tents”: A series of letters track the complex train of subletting arrangements among young New Yorkers – which then all unravel when the original owners return home.
• “The Summer People”: A city couple stays in a tourist town past Labor Day and discovers the diabolical reason why no one goes there off-season.
• “All She Said Was Yes”: A young girl is not sad after her parents die because after all, she foresaw their death and now she has seen the future demise of the woman caring for her.