Fairy Tale Review Archive
Browse submissions from past editions, web exclusive content, author Q&A, and more.
The practice of retelling fairy tales in the form of literary fiction is, if not quite hallowed, certainly established. The great Angela Carter’s revelatory 1979 story collection, “The Bloody Chamber” — a brocaded work of heady sensuality, intelligence and violence — remains the benchmark, but Kate Bernheimer’s Fairy Tale Review and the several excellent Bernheimer-edited anthologies spun off from it carry the standard forward. Those are just some of the more overt homages; Western literature owes as much to fairy tales as it does to Greek myth and the Bible.
-The New York Times
‘Sunday Queen’ & ‘Queen’s Mother’ & ‘Queen’s Eulogy for Uncle’
Queen is free as a mite
in the Lord’s mystical eyebrow,
growing ears for no reason.
‘Bigfoot Thumbs a Ride’ & ‘Animal Bride’
Once, there was nowhere to go. Nowhere
to get to. My movement through the slash
pines and saw palms was pure physical
expression.
Small Animal
Sara herself did not know the people throwing the party, but she went to the house in the woods anyway.
Pins & Needles No. 41: Elise Winn
No. 41: Elise Winn Q. “After my father left, she’d passed the books down to me. Remember, she said, none of this is true.” How do you see that...
Fairy-Tale Files: Stories Behind the Landmarks
Fairy-Tale Files, published once weekly, feature three variations of a fairy tale chosen by one of Fairy Tale Review’s editors. In the Modoc...
Pins & Needles No. 40: Christian Rees
No. 40: Christian Rees Q. No one teaches writers how to utilize white space in poetry, and everyone has their own techniques. What advice can you...
The Translucent Issue
Following The Ochre Issue for 2016, we will publish The Translucent Issue in 2017. Submissions open January 1, 2016, at midnight EST—visit...
Pins & Needles No. 39: Kirsten Holt
No. 39: Kirsten Holt Q. Selkies are a form of shapeshifter, a popular trope in fairy tales, where a person puts on the skin of an animal and takes...
Miscellany: The Fairy-Tale Nature Films of Painlevé & Hamon
The French documentarian Jean Painlevé (1902-1989) made over two hundred short films about natural and scientific phenomena in his lifetime. Many of...
Fairy-Tale Files: Juniper (re-)Incarnate
Fairy-Tale Files, published once weekly, feature three variations of a fairy tale chosen by one of Fairy Tale Review’s editors. In The Juniper Tree,...
Pins & Needles No. 38: Christina Kloess
No. 38: Christina Kloess Q. “The house is alive.” Do you think every house has a kind of life? What about the place you're living now? I believe...
Fairy-Tale Files: Getting Rid of Ghosts
Fairy-Tale Files, published once weekly, feature three variations of a fairy tale chosen by one of Fairy Tale Review’s editors. In the Chinese fairy...
Pins & Needles No. 37: Majda Gama
No. 37: Majda Gama Q. Fairy tales are oral in nature, and you capture that with how the headdress is from a time “when tongue trumped ink, skin and...
Miscellany: Brazen Heads
Scientific Hyrtls We turn to the dead to understand the processes of life. Mute and empty-eyed, 139 human skulls stare down from their perches along...
Fairy-Tale Files: The Appropriators (Women Assuming Other Women’s Identities)
Fairy-Tale Files, published once weekly, feature three variations of a fairy tale chosen by one of Fairy Tale Review’s editors, interns, or past...
