A terrifyingly close-to-home sense of everyday unease runs through all of Aimee Pokwatka’s work, turning familiar spaces into something slightly off-kilter. The author of Self-Portrait with Nothing and The Parliament, she has also taught writers of all ages and worked as an editor on Salt Hill Journal and The Newtowner, and is a member of Yellow Studio, a creative community for women and artists in Northern Westchester.
She now returns with her third novel, Accumulation, published by Putnam Books on 5 May 2026, a story partly inspired by her own New York home – one she suggests might not be entirely ghost-free.
Her tense, unsettling and serpentine new book lays bare the high price women pay for the promises of domesticity and motherhood, and the many ways in which families can be haunted.
The story centers on Tennessee Cherish, a former documentary filmmaker turned stay-at-home mom who moves with her family into their dream home, only to find her husband increasingly absent and her children behaving strangely. As unsettling occurrences begin to pile up – from mysterious noises, a recurring doll, to extremely disturbing discoveries – she starts to suspect something is supernatural is afoot in the house and is forced to uncover the source of the haunting before it destroys her family.
To mark the book’s publication, CinemaChords spoke with Pokwatka about how the novel transcends typical ghost story trappings, exploring causality and our minds’ tendency to distort and rationalize unsettling experiences. We also discuss how the story reframes childhood fears through a parent’s lens, stressing the value of confronting those fears head on. Pokwatka also shares her on own reliance on nonfiction as a way to stay grounded, a perspective that definitely helps give the novel’s supernatural elements a real sense of realism and emotional weight.
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