As we prepare to re-open to digital submissions at midnight tonight (as in 12 pm EST on February 1, 2018), we thought it a good time to give you all a little glimpse into the people behind the curtain at Fairy Tale Review.
This week, we’re looking at the core digital squad, who read your work in 2017 and are the force behind our renewed effort to publish original work online. Next week, we’ll follow up with the rest of our editors, many of whom are hard at work on closing up production on The Charcoal Issue.
Emrys knee-deep in kitten love.
Emrys Donaldson
Managing Editor, Digital
As an editor, I am looking for voice-driven fairy tales that act as cartographers of new spaces, whether that means a map of a new world the size of that world or something found in the interstices of the known. I find power and surprise in tales told from a variety of perspectives, both authorial and narrational. Too, the act of retelling opens a dialogue that occurs across centuries, which is in and of itself a magical act.
Sarah rockin’ the rooftops.
Sarah Murray
Associate Editor, Digital
Technically I’m one of the prose editors, but I’ve also been reading some of our poetry submissions. It’s important to me to publish marginalized voices and stories, and it is very easy for me to be hypnotized by the voice of a piece, let’s say. Or ownership: nothing is sexier than a voice that takes a fairy tale and makes it its own, says “I have the right to be here.” I don’t really look for surprise so much as subversion, and I particularly love stories about bodies, or stories where the language offers a spatial experience.
Nix thoroughly enjoying a very fairy-tale environment.
Nix Thérèse
Associate Editor, Digital
I particularly enjoy retellings that shift to POVs & tensions overlooked or downplayed in the original. Challenging and remixing what’s already presented works in tandem with creating anew: we should consider “why this voice?” to deepen our literary canon. Because nothing we make exists in a vacuum, I find it necessary to consider location, how the dynamic of a poem is able to ping forward and backward while also sitting presently. The magic of fairy tales, for me, comes from complicating “harmless” objects & “simple” moments. In Snow White, for example, glass becomes a means of surveillance and a snack becomes her best-known poisoning. In this way, any story can become transformative or surreal. How can we elevate “the small”?
Mikko and some… steps!
Mikko Harvey
Associate Editor, Digital
I’m especially interested in surrealism, dark little fables, and the poem you are currently worried is too strange to show anybody—that strangeness may be where the freshest material is. I’m always happy to see poems that (like fairy tales) appreciate the existence of other animals, and don’t assume humans are the only heroes on this planet. And, like Nix, I look for poems that elevate the small, the overlooked, the hidden. In the words of Dean Young, “Do not confuse size with scale: / the cathedral may be very small, / the eyelash monumental.”
Joel and his newest member of the FTR family.
Joel Hans
Managing Editor
My greatest pleasure in editing Fairy Tale Review is becoming slowly acquainted with the massive, talented, but under-respected population of writers who embrace oddity, surrealism, impossible logic, and magic in their work. In the last few years, I’ve become particularly interested in work that imagines our world’s future through these most ancient storytelling styles and techniques, but I also just have a good-sized soft spot for anything that gets unexpectedly anthropomorphized. I love unique retellings—the more tangential and extreme the thread between your version and the original, the better—and like Emrys, I’m looking for prose that’s driven by voice and language. My time with Fairy Tale Review has always been bound by certain questions: What is a fairy-tale story? or, What is a fairy-tale poem? or, What is a fairy-tale essay? I’m excited to see how writers can stretch the definitions I already think I have.
