TEIKA BELLAMY explores the concept of otherness in Cassandra Parkin’s fairy tales: ‘Throughout my childhood and a large part of my early adult life I didn’t like my name. It was so obviously foreign, ‘other’, and as most children and young adults come to understand, being different is not desirable.’
LOUISE MURRAY explores Oscar Wilde’s fairy tales: ‘Look beneath the surface and simplicity of the narrative, and the reader will find concealed there a deep complexity which complements the ornateness of prose – a complexity of morality, of feeling and of soul.’
PODCAST: In the final instalment of this series of Short Story Masterclass podcasts, JAC CATTANEO talks with award-winning author Marina Warner about the domestic in fairy tales, rewriting and re-imagining myths, and balancing research with imagination…
MORGAN OMOTOYE finds the wildness in this modern-day fairy tale: ‘Thomas McGuane’s short story ‘Stars’, published in The New Yorker in June 2013, is about Jessica Ramirez, an astronomer. This ‘star gazer’, when we first meet her, is on an early morning hike, her surroundings full of bewildering awe…’
CHRISTINE GENOVESE considers the influence of fairy tales on the short stories of Thomas Hardy: ‘The magic in ‘The Fiddler of the Reels’ is illusory. Hardy does not pull rabbits out of hats. That would upset the balance…’
In her essay, EVER DUNDAS introduces us to ‘The Erl-King’ by Angela Carter: ‘I haven’t come across another writer who makes me feel such joy when I read their work. She weaves a spell, pulling you into her dark, beautiful and perverse worlds.’
