Nevermore will South Whidbey residents want for a taste of Victorian era macabre.

Whidbey Island Center for the Arts and director Gwen Jones will debut the first in a series of dramatic literary readings entitled “Masters of the Pen” with a night of Edgar Allan Poe.

The reading will be presented at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 30. Tickets are $10 and may be purchased from the box office or online at wicaonline.com.

During this initial performance, actors Ethan Berkley and Lucy Pearce will read from four classic tales including “Annabel Lee,” “The Telltale Heart,” “The Oval Portrait” and “The Raven” penned by master of horror, Poe.

Each piece presents its own flavor of madness from what Pearce and Jones refer to as “madness in loss” in “Annabel Lee” to the more physical horrors of “The Telltale Heart.”

“The whole idea of Masters of the Pen is to read stuff that people have heard of or read before and introduce them to some lesser known pieces,” said Jones.

Jones, an avid fan of old radio mysteries, noted that there is something distinctly frightening about hearing a horror story and being forced to use imagination.

“In today’s horror, especially around Halloween, we’ve gotten lazy. We expect something squirting out of someone’s body or chainsaws ripping. …I think we rely too much on seeing the horror instead of feeling the horror,” she said, explaining that in most modern films and plays, there is not much left to the imagination.

“The ideal of Masters of the Pen is to have people remember their imagination,” she added.

Jones said that Poe’s work leaves much to the reader to decipher and, in many cases, introduces the reader to relatable or likable characters who have “a twist to them,” usually in the form of madness.

She noted that, ideally, the project will be a long-term endeavor spanning several years and including the works of 80 or so different authors.

In the spring, she hopes to host an evening of Mark Twain and an afternoon with Dr. Seuss.