Twin Peaks is one of the first true Cult TV shows that thrived upon fan interest in the nascent Internet era, and colonised space on the World Wide Web from an early stage. Despite comprising only 30 episodes, the world of Twin Peaks has endured and fascinated its adherents long after the show was cancelled. While Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me is hugely indebted to the TV series, the film exists as a separate artefact and possesses its own unique identity. It functions as a prequel to the series, but ultimately it is a hymn to Laura Palmer, the fetishised mystery girl of the original series, who was only glimpsed in death through a kaleidoscope of epistolary details: diaries, video tapes, and second-hand recollections. In this book I will indicate the themes that thread through some of David Lynch's films prior to Fire Walk With Me, and also touch upon the original TV series to offer context, but my primary interest is to explore and open up Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me as a powerful account of trauma and a nuanced portrait of a complex young woman trying to hold together her shattered personality for the cosy community which wishes her to conform to their ideals and never speak of her torment, or their complicity in it.
Author
Maura McHugh is a writer living in Galway, Ireland. She has a MA in Irish Gothic, and a MA in Screenwriting. Her short fiction, poetry, and essays have appeared in publications in America and Europe. She's published two collections - Twisted Fairy Tales and Twisted Myths - in the USA, and her new collection The Boughs Withered When I Told Them My Dreams was published by NewCon Press in 2019. She's written several comic book series for companies like Dark Horse and IDW, and most recently Judge Anderson for 2000 AD, and is also a screenwriter, playwright, a critic, and has served on the juries of international literary, comic book, and film awards. She's written a monograph on David Lynch's iconic film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, published by Electric Dreamhouse Press/PS Publishing, which was nominated for a 2018 British Fantasy Award for Best Non Fiction. Her short story 'Bone Mother' was adapted into a short stop-motion animated film by Sylvie Trouvé and Dale Hayward of the See Creature animation company, produced by the National Film Board of Canada’s Animation Studio, and premiered at Festival Stop Motion in Montreal in September 2018. Maura's sf rom-com radio play The Love of Small Appliances was broadcast on NearFM in Ireland in June 2019.
