The Fairy Tale Review

I received a lovely email from Kate Bernheimer, Founder and Editor of the Fairy Tale Review, in support of The Velvet Chamber, by offering to send this call for writers to their contacts.  This is such wonderful news because it is one of the most valuable and best known resource for writers, scholars, artists and editors engaged in similar work.  From their home page:

"An indispensable addition to any collection concerning itself with the mythic material of childhood—both childhood's experiences and its traditional tales, and how they reverberate through adult lives."

 

 —Gregory Maguire, author of Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister, and Mirror Mirror: A Novel

Ms. Bernheim also graciously suggested a list of possible contributors from her book Mirror, Mirror on the Wall; Women Writers Explore Their Favorite Fairy Tales, as well as My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me; which is forthcoming from Penguin with a foreward from Gregory Maguire.  Contributors include such authors as Shelley Jackson, Kathryn Davis, Joy Williams, Kellie Wells, Francine Prose, Kelly Link, Lydia Millet, Alissa Nutting, Stacey Richter, Joyce Carol Oates, Karen Joy Fowler, Sarah Shun-lien Bynum, Aimee Bender, Francesca Lia Block, and more.

The Fairy Tale Review also has an ongoing project; collecting volumes of fairy-tales which are in danger of disappearing from the world.  They are asking people to send their books, and  include a short narrative about how they acquired it.  I'm sending a first edition of The Life and Strange Adventures of Robinson Crusoe of York, Mariner by Daniel Defoe with

"nearly one hundred original drawings and decorations done from sketches made in the tropics specially [sic] for this work by The Brothers Louis and Frederick Rhead. By arrangement with Harper & Sons, New York, 1924."

The book is falling apart, but still very beautiful.  I had originally bought it when my niece was born--- as an investment for her, a college fund perhaps.  Now, it seems like a perfect addition to the library the Fairy Tale Review is creating.