Your Fairy Tale News Hound Is Now A Card Carrying Founding Member of the AFTS!

It's official!

It has been a week teetering on insanity (exactly how many days can one go without sleep?) but I've nearly made it to the end and will be able to bring you daily news again shortly... (after I catch 40 winks!)

Very quickly, an exciting bit of my news that arrived by mail box this week: I am now, officially, a card-carrying founding member of the AFTS (Australian Fairy Tale Society)! *does backflip* *imagines she's doing a backflip while pouring a celebratory glass of wine*

Australia is rich with many (many!) authors who work with fairy tales, fairy tale artists and filmmakers and those using innovative approaches to fairy tale scholarship. You might be surprised how many names you already know, but didn't realize hark from Oz! (I'm aiming to highlight some of these people around the time of the inaugural conference taking place on June 9th.)

The AFTS is brand new and needs support to help get things running, with the intent that their work will not only benefit Australians working in fairy tales, but will also be of use to scholars, students, artists and enthusiasts all over the world.

To this end, AFTS has a crowd-funding campaign with the option to become a founding member at the same time as well (no Australian citizenship required).They (we!) are now a little over half-way funded in the modest goal of $2000. If regular Once Upon A Blog readers donated just the minimum, we'd easily meet the goal and fill the kitty!

Please consider donating to help this important - and much needed - society, start it's daunting work in earnest. Every little bit helps.

Here is a little summary of the AFTS' objectives:

The objectives of the Australian Fairy Tale Society as set out in our extremely new constitution are:  

To investigate, appreciate and perform fairy tales within the Australian context through: 

• Collecting original Australian fairy tales, fairy tale adaptations, interpretations, and criticism, through research within existing collections and in the field. 

• Organising and cataloguing this fairy tale collection meaningfully for maximum accessibility by Australian and international researchers, folklorists, educators and creatives. 

• Analysing this fairy tale collection according to evolving manifestations of Australian cultural identity  

• Communicating this investigation through: interpersonal discussions (conferences and small groups); the publication of written articles; digital resources (websites, social media, teleconferencing)  

• Building a community of interest across Australia, (academics, folklorists, performers) in national and local groups, which can communicate with like-minded communities internationally.  

• Promoting Australian fairy tale retellings in all forms 

• Encouraging the creation of new fairy tale works (literary, visual, musical and performative). 

• Analysing this fairy tale collection according to evolving manifestations of Australian cultural identity  

• Communicating this investigation through: interpersonal discussions (conferences and small groups); the publication of written articles; digital resources (websites, social media, teleconferencing)  

• Building a community of interest across Australia, (academics, folklorists, performers) in national and local groups, which can communicate with like-minded communities internationally.  

• Promoting Australian fairy tale retellings in all forms 

• Encouraging the creation of new fairy tale works (literary, visual, musical and performative).

The status of the crowd-funding campaign on May 22, 2014