Donna del Lago (Le Bout du monde II, detalle, editada), Leonor Fini, c. 1953. Óleo sobre lienzo. Colección particular (subastada en Sotheby’s, 2021).

Information

  • Date: Sunday, 15 November 2026.
  • Schedule: 11:00 AM – 12:30 PM.
  • Duration: 90 minutes (including 30 minutes of writing time).
  • Room: Aula 10, Ground Floor, Casa del Lector (Matadero).
  • Address: Entrance via Paseo de la Chopera, 14.
  • Instructor: Laura Lee Bahr.
  • Fee: €22.
  • Register here.
  • Target audience: Adults (18 and over).
  • Language: English only (no interpretation).
  • Materials: Something to write with. Participants are encouraged to bring their dream journals (if they keep one), along with a sense of humor and wonder. As part of our discussion, we will share meaningful or weird dreams.

Description

We will explore how to connect to the endlessly creative and mysterious source of story within your own dreams. Practical tips for remembering your dreams and using them to hack through writing blocks and creative slumps. We will talk about different symbols connect across space and time, participants will have time to write, discuss, share, and play with dream imagery.

Instructor

Laura Lee Bahr is an award-winning American author, filmmaker, screenwriter, actress, director and producer whose work moves between literature, independent cinema, theater and experimental art. Her fiction is particularly associated with weird fiction, horror and bizarro literature, although her more recent novels have expanded into psychological thriller and historical gothic fiction.

Bahr’s creative career began through acting and theater, and she has spent more than two decades working in independent film and black-box theater. She was involved with Los Angeles’ Eclectic Company Theatre for approximately a decade, working as an actor, director and producer and serving as Vice-President of Membership and Production. Her experience in performance and filmmaking has had a strong influence on her approach to storytelling, particularly her interest in voice, character and unconventional narrative structures.

Her literary debut, Haunt, was published by Fungasm Press and won the Wonderland Book Award for Best Novel in 2011. The novel established her reputation as an experimental writer willing to challenge traditional approaches to genre and narrative. She followed it with Long-Form Religious Porn, a provocative work blending horror, sexuality, religion, vampires, filmmaking and dark comedy. The novel developed a particularly strong readership in Spain, where its Spanish translation received the William of Baskerville Award for Best Translated Novel in 2019.

Bahr’s reputation as a short-story writer was further established by Angel Meat, which won the Wonderland Book Award for Best Collection in 2017. Her fiction has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies, including the Bram Stoker Award-winning anthology Demons, as well as publications associated with authors and filmmakers such as Francesca Lia Block and Nicolas Winding Refn.

In 2018, Bahr was selected as the Spring Writer-in-Residence at the Jack Kerouac House in Orlando, Florida. The residency became an important moment in her development as a professional writer, giving her dedicated time to write and helping her establish a more disciplined literary practice.

Her career has also included more than a decade of teaching, including acting, vocal performance and other subjects. She has worked particularly with neurodiverse students, combining her artistic and educational interests.

After many years in Los Angeles, Bahr moved to Massachusetts, where she continues to write and work across different creative disciplines.

Her more recent novels reveal an evolution beyond the bizarro scene in which she first became known. Who Is the Liar, published by Little A in 2025, is a psychological thriller centered on a ten-year-old girl trying to determine whom she can trust when her family becomes entangled with an alleged child murderer. In 2026, she published The Knocking, a historical gothic novel set in 1850s New York and inspired by the origins of American spiritualism, séances and the Fox sisters.

Across her work, Bahr combines horror, dark humor, the uncanny and psychological complexity, while consistently questioning conventional ideas about truth, identity and reality. Her career is ultimately defined by creative versatility and a refusal to remain within a single genre or artistic medium.

View the full program of the 18th Sui Generis Madrid Festival