The Enchanted Conversation Begins... Tomorrow!

* STOP THE PRESSES * STOP THE PRESSES * STOP THE PRESSES *

2010 promises to be a great year for fairy tales in more ways than one.
Our year starts off with the premier issue of a brand new fairy tale 'blogazine', right on January 1st - tomorrow!

Happy New Year indeed!

Enchanted Conversation is an online 'zine with new stories and retellings, poems, articles, book reviews, new and classic/golden age art and even contests! It's a fantastic and very welcome addition to our fairy tale reading, writing and research, helmed by an awesome woman, Kate Wolford,* who really knows what she's doing.

Sleeping Beauty
by Sir Edward Burne-Jones

The first issue's theme is Sleeping Beauty and there's lots to explore (see Kate's Introduction for a quick overview of what's in the issue HERE).

What are you waiting for? Go join the conversation!

Click HERE to get started.

*Kate Wolford is a university lecturer and teaches both creative writing and a course on fairy tales at IUSB (Indiana University South Bend). She kindly makes her fairy tale teaching and resource blog "Diamonds and Toads" available to anyone who's interested in the study and reading of fairy tales - a topic which is clearly dear to her heart. I consider it a great privilege to call her a friend of Once Upon A Blog. Kate is committed to furthering the interest and study of fairy tales for all (think fun with substance!) and her magazine employs this principle along with a high standard of excellence in writing and research, so expect great things in this issue and in the ones to come.

"Diamonds & Toads" Blog Holds "The Great 'Sleeping Beauty' Rewrite" (I of IV)

If you're not aware of the blog "Diamonds & Toads", let me now direct your attention to this wonderful resource:

Run by Kate Wolford, a lecturer at Indiana University South Bend, this blog focuses on the analysis, research and writing of fairy tales as well as the general enjoyment of fairy tales and, while aimed to help her students, is available and accessible to non-students too. Kate, who's love of fairy tales is evident with every post, encourages dialogue on fairy tales from all sources and is working on getting an online magazine, specifically on fairy tales, up and running sometime during 2010 (more details to come).

(We can't wait Kate!)

In the meantime, she held a contest called "The Great 'Sleeping Beauty' Rewrite" and had a lot of excellent entries.

The above gorgeous painting is one of my favorite artistic renditions of Sleeping Beauty and is by a later Pre-Raphaelite artist, Edward Burne-Jones.

The requirements were that the story be unpublished elsewhere (ie 'new'), to retell 'Sleeping Beauty' and be 1 000 words or less. Entrants had one month to write it (from July 1st to July 31st). The story had to be 'G' rated but adult in tone and not geared toward children. Diamonds & Toads reserved the right to publish the story on their blog and keep it there, though authors were free to publish it anywhere else after the contest was over. And yes, there was a lovely fairy tale themed prize (you can see a picture on the blog).

Kate was delighted with, not only the number of entries but the quality of them and, with her permission, I'm going to introduce you all to the stories (which are available to read HERE) over the next few days and show you just how many wonderful variations people came up with.

But the good news doesn't end there.

There's ANOTHER contest - just for READING the stories! (Details HERE on the August 7th entry.) You enter by reading, then making a comment... where and how, I'll leave up to you to figure out. (It's not difficult.) Contest ends at the end of August so get reading! (The prize is a lovely one-of-a-kind artwork by talented artist Cat Mallard, a.k.a. darklingwoods on Etsy and Twitter. (She has other fairy tale themed art too and all her work is beautiful, so check out her Etsy page HERE.)

Part I of "The Great 'Sleeping Beauty' Rewrite" is posting tomorrow.

Before we get to the new stories, though, I'd like to share two of my favorite retellings:

Jane Yolen's Briar Rose and Robert Coover's Briar Rose (book covers are shown below and you can get more information on each by clicking on the images. Please note there are two covers for Jane Yolen's book currently available.)

I recommend the audio book for this version too - unabridged of course!

In the meantime, go check out the rest of "Diamonds & Toads". If you're not familiar with the story this blog is named for you can find more information there. ;)