Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and Professor Emerita Alison Lurie shared a ghost story and talked about writing at the Oct. 28 Literary Luncheon, hosted by President David Skorton and Professor Robin Davisson at their Cayuga Heights home.

Lurie introduced "Another Halloween," from her 1994 short story collection "Women and Ghosts," as being "about the fears and delusions women sometimes have." In the story, a woman named Marguerite is guiltily reminded of a tragic event from her childhood when she sees (or has a vision of) a trick-or-treater in a bunny costume.

"I had years of taking kids out at Halloween," Lurie said. "This was based on seeing a child in a bunny costume running behind a group of other kids, and I remember thinking they were not looking after her."

When she finished reading, Lurie admitted she did not set out to make the stories in "Women and Ghosts" overtly supernatural. She wrote "Another Halloween" so that it held the possibility that the child Marguerite saw was a product of her imagination.

"The first story I wrote for this was about a haunted piece of furniture, 'The Highboy,'" she said. "My parents had died and we had to figure out what to do with their possessions. I thought, what if it did have those feelings? But I didn't let it in all the way."

Lurie took questions about her writing process after the reading.

"You've got to find your own system," she said. "I make a lot of notes for something I might write -- I'm not very good at outlines. I do carry characters over into new work, and that simplifies things."

Skorton asked Lurie her opinion on whether oral or written literature was better.

"Psychologists have studied this," Lurie said, noting that some authors are not good readers of their own work, Dylan Thomas being a notable exception.

"We have all heard stories before we read them," she said. "That is basic and essential to us."

Lurie is the Frederic J. Whiton Professor of American Literature Emerita. She taught at Cornell from 1969 to 2005 and is the author of 10 novels including "Foreign Affairs," which won the Pulitzer in 1985. "The War Between the Tates" (1974) and "Truth and Consequences" (2005) were both set at the fictional but familiar-looking Corinth University.

She also has published nonfiction works on fashion ("The Language of Clothes"), children's literature and folklore. She has completed a new book, "The Language of Houses," and is starting work on a children's book.

The Literary Luncheon series is in its fourth year and features Cornellian and local writers. The series is sponsored by the Office of the President.