"The Wild Girl" (US Edition) Is Out! (And Coming to OUABlog!)

She's here, she's here!

I'm supposed to wait till it's Once Upon A Blog's turn on Kate Forsyth's virtual book tour through the US, to talk at length about this book, or to post our waiting-in-the-wings OUABlog team review (care of Christie Pang) but it felt weird not announcing on Tuesday that it's out NOW, because if you're remotely interested, you will not be disappointed and will wished you didn't wait to get your own copy.


I will admit to hunting down a UK edition (with silhouette artwork) over a year ago when I first heard about the book, knowing I'd at least like it (besides: silhouettes = pretty!). I was not prepared for how MUCH I would like it! The whole "tale behind the tales" (who told them to whom, how the tales were edited and changed [and possibly why], their layers and shades of meaning, how they fit into the cultural landscape of the Napoleonic war at the time etc) is a interesting source of speculation for any fairy tale enthusiast but you may not have considered it in quite the same, fascinating and immediate (and 'human') way as how Kate has told the story. The story of Dortchen Wild (who eventually became Dortchen Grimm - yes, wife of one of THE Brothers Grimm) is a story that makes you wonder why this tale isn't as well known as the fairy tales themselves.

Having read so many fairy tale novels I'm very picky with those I put in my "keep at arm's reach" fairy tale novel bookshelf but this one definitely qualifies, and I've already read  - and referred to - it multiple times.



There's more to come and Once Upon A Blog will have a special INTERVIEW with Kate Forsyth herself (with bonus special 'behind-the-scenes peek!) on this coming Monday - July 13th. (And you'll begin to have an idea of why I love this book so much.)

And there will also be a GIVEAWAY!

Stay tuned...

Theater: "Neck of the Woods" Tells the Wolf's Story Like You've Not Heard Before

I will admit, I was skeptical too when I first read this claim: haven't we seen Red Riding Hood and every incarnation of the Wolf and wolves, done to death? But Neck of the Woods promises something a little different, and certainly, the approach is quite unusual.

Here's the description:

MIF (Manchester International Festival) has invited Turner Prize-winning artist Douglas Gordon (Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait, Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parreno) and celebrated pianistHélène Grimaud to create Neck of the Woods, a portrait of the wolf brought to life in a startling collision of visual art, music and theatre. 

On the stage of HOME’s intimate new theatre, legendary actor Charlotte Rampling (The Night Porter,Broadchurch) will recite and perform the story of the wolf as never before. 

Grimaud will curate and perform a series of works for piano, while Gordon will create the visual world. They have collaborated with Rampling and New York-based novelist and playwright Veronica Gonzalez Peña, weaving together stories, music, motifs, phrases and fragments to build this lyrical and beguiling work. 

In a new partnership to support their ongoing creative development, the Sacred Sounds Women’s Choir, first formed for MIF13, will perform as part of the soundscape to the production.

The Guardian has a lengthy and in-depth write-up on the show and the creators, (wonderfully titled "What Large Teeth You Have!") something which those who are interested in exploring the darker themes of fairy tales and LRRH in particular will find very interesting. (Note: this article does get a little dark with it's language and descriptions but also talks about the wolf as portrayed in literature and myth - why so negatively and the nature of man in contrast. It's a very interesting, recommended read.) Here are some excerpts:

Helene Grimaud working in wolf preservation

“For me, the most important thing is to be as close to the dark as possible, and then, when the lights come up, it should be the same as when you’re a child, when you have a nightmare and then you wake up and you feel safe and then you’re frightened to go back to sleep.” In his gravelly, laconic Glaswegian voice, the Turner-prizewinning artist Douglas Gordon is painting me a picture of a new play about the Big Bad Wolf that he is directing, designing and performing in at this year’s Manchester international festival. 

Entitled Neck of the Woods, it is a retelling of the Little Red Riding Hood story, and brings together an impressive group of talents: Gordon, the concert pianist and wolf conservationist Hélène Grimaud, Charlotte Rampling and the acclaimed Mexican-born writer and film-maker Veronica Gonzalez Peña. 

...For the story, Gordon asked Gonzalez Peña for something “very loosely based onLittle Red Riding Hood”. Her script will draw on the many different takes on the wolf myth in literature, bringing them together in a collage of narrative, sound, lighting and singing. 

The wolf has not had a good press in literature. For Aesop, writing 600 years before the birth of Christ, it is a creature without virtue. It is insatiable. It is deceitful and selfish. It eats children.

Gustav Dore 

...in western culture the rapacious reputation has conquered all others. And so the wolf, and its humanoid incarnation the werewolf, has stalked its miscreant way through legend and literature, from the tales of Perrault, the brothers Grimm, De La Fontaine and Hans Christian Andersen, through Dracula, Tolkien, CS Lewis and Prokofiev. When film came along it took up the baton and countless werewolf ripper movies have been inspired by Guy Endore’s 1933 cult novel The Werewolf of Paris. 

For all this negativity, the last century has seen a change in attitude to the wolf. Kipling casts the wolves in a benign role in The Jungle Book, as the saviours of Mowgli. JK Rowlingoffers a sympathetic portrait of a man fighting his inner werewolf in the character of Remus Lupin in her Harry Potter novels, while Stephenie Meyer’s tribe of shape-changing werewolves are warriors against the forces of evil in her Twilight novels. And of course there is the short story by Angela Carter, “The Company of Wolves”, which subverts traditional sexual attitudes to Little Red Riding Hood and ends with the girl stripping off to take her pleasure with the beast.

"Neck of the Woods" 

It is against this backdrop that Gonzalez Peña, in conversation with Gordon, has woven her script, bringing in references to Freud and the little-known but influential early 20th-century American writer Sherwood Anderson. I ask her whether, with a mind to Grimaud’s conservation activities, the play will try to right the malign image of the wolf. No, she says, it’s not going to be a polemical piece. Grimaud acknowledges that a didactic approach would not work artistically: “In the beginning, I suppose a part of me thought, ‘Great, we’re doing a piece about the ecology and the behaviour of wolves. We are rectifying the story and telling the facts,’ and, of course, it couldn’t be that.” 

For Gordon, it’s not about real wolves at all. “It is more to do with the metaphor of the wolf. There is the history of the she-wolf, but mostly wolves represent a bad man. One of the things I wanted to explore with this project in Manchester was that there is badness, there are bad reputations and they’re not without any foundations. I think men are worse than wolves, for sure.”

And a note from the actress Charlotte Rampling, who narrates the play, as the "third wolf", via the Manchester Evening News:

Charlotte Rampling, Douglas Gordon & beloved arctic wolf (preserved)

..Rampling would be the first to admit that she was once a child scared of the big bad wolf. 

“When you re-read those stories when you’re older - the Hans Christian Andersen ones, the Brothers Grimm - they really are terrifying, they teach you really wild things,” she laughs.“You might say, ‘Oh gosh, children can’t hear this!’, but children do need to get a handle on primitive violence and the difference between right and wrong, who’s going to get eaten and how we’re going to adjust to rather terrifying situations.“Those stories have been read to children for so long there must be something essential in them that we believe children do need. And nursery rhymes - they’re pretty cruel too.” 

Cast by Turner Prize winning artist, writer and director Douglas Gordon and co-writer and pianist Hélène Grimaud in Manchester International Festival production Neck Of The Woods, Charlotte will be tackling the topic of the wolf in fiction - in particular, picking apart the reputation of this majestic woodland beast. 

...Charlotte is a multi-part interpreter of the story: as narrator and actor, she switches between the role of parent reading to their child and the protagonist of the story.

I want to include this final note from Rampling's interview as it speaks to storytelling today, something which is (unfortunately) often run over by film, TV and 'moving image' entertainment. I think what she says speaks to an re-emerging interest in live storytelling once again, albeit in a different form of multi-media. It's something I think we, as people who watch fairy tales continue to live in being told and going from one incarnation in popular thinking to another, as they're told, retold, spread, discovered and re-discovered, should take note of:

Charlotte Rampling

Having the innovative creative environment of MIF to transform into this multifaceted character is what encouraged Charlotte to take the role. “It is enabling these forms of creation to happen,” she says about the festival. 

“If everything is filmic language, we don’t give people a chance to express where they really are in the world. With experimental language, it means you can really research areas that you won’t at all be able to do in the theatrical system.”

"Neck of the Woods" plays in Manchester at HOME, as part of the Manchester International Festival, from July 10th-July 18th 2015.

In Memorium: Miyoko Matsutani - Thank You For All The Tales

On February 28th, 2015, one of Japan's leading folktale scholars, collectors and writers, passed away. We lost a fairy tale hero that day  - a woman who made it her mission to preserve the folktales of Japan before they were lost to memory - and whether you know her name or not, we fairy tale folk have benefitted greatly from her life's work. I feel it's only right that I pay tribute to her memory and help her name be remembered.

She began writing fairy tales after graduating high school and wrote over 300 books (picture books, children's and juvenile literature) and was the first Japanese author to make the Hans Christian Andersen honor list (Award of Excellence) for Taro the Dragon Boy and won numerous awards before and since. A committed peace activist, her original works often used themes of war and peace.

She was also the head of, what I've seen described as "a folklore laboratory" which, although is probably only due to a weird translation, sounds awesome. (The real name of the organization is The Miyoko Matsutani Folklore Research Center.) Matsutani herself traveled all over Japan collecting folktales from ancient storytellers, as well as being a storyteller herself - something which, she seems to have done right up till she passed away. She has been instrumental in reviving the fading practice and art of storytelling in Japan, which diminished greatly when the Industrial Age began. Due to her traveling, storytelling, publishing and working with community centers, women's groups, schools and more, the practice is coming back, and although she alone can't take credit for it, she has been one of the key instruments in making that happen.

Her work hasn't been restricted to Japanese fairy tales and folktales either. She worked with Asian tales in general (in addition to her Japanese focus), publishing retellings of Chinese tales and fables as well as Korean, Vietnamese, Philippine, Indonesian and World Folklore collections. (Busy lady!)

Cover by Piotr Fąfrowicz

Here's a little summary extract on her scholarship contribution, from Books of Japan:

As head of the Miyoko Matsutani Folklore Research Center she collects and retells folktales from throughout Japan, and her Gendai minwa ko (Thoughts on Modern Folklore; 12 volumes) has earned praise for its compilation of folklore from the Meiji period (1868–1912) on. She is one of the true giants of contemporary children's literature in Japan, and her complete works have been published twice.

One thing I noticed in trying to search for her books, is that many of her picture books ended up being translated to Russian but are unfortunately difficult to find in English (apart from Taro the Dragon Boy).  You can however, see a whole lot of her Japanese covers HERE. It also seems like tracking down her multi-volume works and her collections of ghost stories and folktales isn't very straight forward either - something I hope will be remedied in the near future, especially since her passing has made it clear how valuable her work was.

There is a new book of hers due to be released in April, titled Shinano of Folklore (honestly - I haven't a clue how to read Japanese so I'm completely at the mercy of an online translator here. I'm not certain this title is correct..) Here's the synopsis, which sounds like a wonderful edition to looking at modern use of folklore and fairy tales in modern Japan and I'm not even going to try moving words around so it makes more sense to our English sentence construction. It has a wonderful charm reading it as is:

Japanese mind hometown revives now of the response with former TBS TV anime "Manga Japan Folk Tales" Mirai Inc. version proven caused a "folklore boom" and "Japanese folklore" series to many years of requests, outfit new We will. Illustrations are intact, the Kuminaoshi the print. "Shinano of folklore" is located in the knot of east and west, folklore that has been handed down among the natural Shinshu which is said to be Japan's roof. Crystal of wisdom, desire ancestors gave birth natural and human battle. 

A knot of East and West. I like that. We're all knots really...

I've done my best to track down the titles of the twelve volume series Thoughts on Modern Folklore (or Modern Folklore Considered) and have listed what I could find/understand below, along with most of the cover pictures. It will give you an idea of how wide her range of study and thinking was, which is pretty wonderful, especially when you realize in order to do this she was tracking the same thing we are here: fairy tale news and use of fairy tales in pop culture and entertainment.







1 Kappa Tengu - God hidden
2 Military conscription inspection and recruits of time
3 Laughter of ghost train, ship and automobile and ghost stories
4 Dream of news fireball missing out soul
5 Story went to news - underworld
6 Home front, thought suppression, air raid, Battle of Okinawa
7 Schools, laughter and ghost stories
8 Laughter of radio, television and ghost stories
9 Echo snake, tree spirits, war and wood
10 Wolf jackals, cats
11 Raccoon mujina
12 Photos of Kai civilization

Here's link to the WHOLE SET.

Here are some other folktale books:

                            

                         Modern Folklore:
                        You Narrator, I Also Narrator

Folklore of the World

Japanese Mythology

Just a few of her "Momo-chan" (peach-chan) books, so beloved by Japanese parents and children. They were based off of her motherhood diary she began keeping when she had her first child.

These don't even begin to cover her books for children and teens with series such as "Story Gems", "Once Upon A Time", a "Thriller Restaurant" series for teens, illustrated folklore collections for children and babies (yes, babies), a huge Japanese folklore series and many, many more. Have a look HERE to see a massive range of titles at Amazon Japan.

Rest in peace Miyoko Matsutani.

Thank you for all the tales.

Additional sources: HERE & HERE

Historically (Closer To) Accurate Disney Princesses

A neat little diversion that popped up today: people making an effort to have some of the Disney Princesses more accurately reflect the time period Disney (seems to have) their version of the story in, with regard to their outfits.

Disney creates fictional worlds for their princesses to live in, drawing on historical and mythical inspiration to create beautiful fairy tales. We wondered what the princesses would’ve looked like if they’d existed in the real world, so we used context clues from the films to determine, as specifically as possible, the time and location of each Disney princess’s story.
*based on the Disney films, not the original source material.

Take a look at the video:

You can find the whole post over at Buzzfeed HERE, which outlines the "context clues" that helped the costume people decide which way to dress each character. The comments are particularly interesting below as well, "discussing" the various time periods, what culture did what etc It's worth a look.

Coming Soon: "The Beast's Garden" by Kate Forsyth

Here's an intriguing sounding book to keep an eye out for: a new retelling of Grimm's Beauty and the Beast, set in Nazi Germany, by fairy tale scholar and writer Kate Forsyth! (Author of The Wild Girl, Bitter Greens and many more.)

Here's the description from Random House publishing:

Linderhof castle, Bavaria, Germany

A retelling of the Grimm's Beauty and The Beast set in Nazi Germany. 

‘I fell in love the night the Nazis first showed their true nature to the world …'  

The Grimm Brothers published a beautiful version of the Beauty & the Beast tale called ‘The Singing, Springing Lark' in 1819. It combines the well-known story of a daughter who marries a beast in order to save her father with another key fairy tale motif, the search for the lost bridegroom. In ‘The Singing, Springing Lark,' the daughter grows to love her beast but unwittingly betrays him and he is turned into a dove. She follows the trail of blood and white feathers he leaves behind him for seven years, and, when she loses the trail, seeks help from the sun, the moon, and the four winds. Eventually she battles an evil enchantress and saves her husband, breaking the enchantment and turning him back into a man.  

Kate Forsyth retells this German fairy tale as an historical novel set in Berlin during the Third Reich. A young woman marries a Nazi officer in order to save her father, but fears her new husband and the regime for which he works. 

Soldier picking flowers

Ava becomes involved with an underground resistance movement in Berlin called the Red Orchestra, made up of artists, writers, diplomats and journalists, who pass on intelligence to the American embassy, distribute leaflets encouraging opposition to Hitler, and help people in danger from the Nazis to escape the country.  

Gradually Ava comes to realise that her husband Leo is part of a dangerous military conspiracy that plans to assassinate Hitler. As Berlin is bombed into ruins, and the Gestapo ruthlessly hunt down all resistance to Nazism, Ava unwittingly betrays Leo. When the Valkyrie plot fails, Leo is arrested and Ava must flee. Living hand-to-mouth in the rubble of Berlin, she must find some way to rescue her husband before he and his fellow conspirators are executed.  

The Beast's Garden is a compelling and beautiful love story, filled with drama, intrigue and heartbreak, taking place between 1938 and 1945 in Berlin, Germany. 

When will it appear? Release date in Australia is set for July 29th, 2015, according to the website, though Kate's blog cites an earlier date of "late April 2015".

International dates (including UK and US) are yet to be announced.

In the meantime, to further whet your appetite, may I suggest looking through the inspirational images Kate has pinned to her The Beast's Garden page on Pinterest. (Some of those inspirations are posted here.)

Lions Gate Tiergarten Berlin

"Bitter Greens" Wins American Library Association Prize for Best Historical Fiction 2015!

A huge congratulations to our fairy tale friend Kate Forsyth!

(Here's the official award listing from the ALA.)

From Kate's Facebook page a few hours ago:

Charlotte-Rose de la Force

Congratulations again Kate!

The award is well deserved.
*clinks glasses of champagne*
(And we can't wait to read what comes next!)

Aussies 'n' Fairy Tales Week: Kate Forsyth, Author and Enchanting Word Weaver

I read recently this interesting quote (source sadly unknown)...

Words cast spells.

That's why it's called SPELLING.

Words are energy.

Use them wisely.

... and it immediately made me think of Kate Forsyth, because that's what this amazing author does: she captivates you with her words and shows you worlds - ours and that of fairy tale, woven together - that you never knew existed. And when she sets about to tell a fairy tale, people start to realize just how real these stories can be.

Ms. Forsyth is an award winning and internationally best selling author and much in demand so we'll have to wait for another time when we can ask her some questions for fairy tale folk here, but the AFTS conference was privileged to have her speak about Rapunzel, which she wrote her recent PhD on (the title of the talk was Rapunzel in the Antipodes), discuss her book based on the story (Bitter Greens) and to also have her on the panel for Cultural Editing: How Some Fairy Tales Get Lost in the Woods. (We are hoping for video eventually but I've yet to hear if all went according to plan for the recordings. Keep your fingers crossed!)

The one thing you should know, apart from being the recipient of many awards over many books for her writing (she is also the author of numerous lovely fantasy novels), when it comes to fairy tales Ms. Forsyth has as tendency to delve into the history behind the tales and weaves them together with the tales themselves. (Her newest adult novel, Dancing on Knives is more contemporary novel, set in Australia and it has a murder...)

Her books have been released one after the other in quick succession this year, with UK version not far behind the Australian ones and now, finally US versions are appearing as well. (So many lovely covers!)

Here are some of her recent books interweaving fairy tales and history with the magic of her words, as well as a new children's fairy tale retelling "duet" and her latest release which puts a little mystery into a very different Little Mermaid story. You'll note she's also been gifted with some of the prettiest book covers out right now.

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BITTER GREENS

A retelling of Rapunzel, interwoven with the story of the real life woman who first told the story, Charlotte-Rose de la Force.
(Released in Australia March 3, 2013)

A lovely stew of sex, fairytales and, well, sex really. THE AGE. An exquisite rendering of the story behind the Rapunzel fairy tale. 

Charlotte-Rose de la Force has been banished from the court of Versailles by the Sun King, Louis XIV, after a series of scandalous love affairs. She is comforted by an old nun, Sœur Seraphina, who tells her the tale of a young girl who, a hundred years earlier, is sold by her parents for a handful of Bitter Greens ... 

After Margherita's father steals a handful of parsley, wintercress and rapunzel from the walled garden of the courtesan Selena Leonelli, he is threatened with having both hands cut off ... unless he and his wife give away their little girl.  

Selena is the famous red-haired muse of the artist Tiziano, first painted by him in 1512 and still inspiring him at the time of his death, sixty-four years later. Called La Strega Bella, Selena is at the centre of Renaissance life in Venice, a world of beauty and danger, seduction and betrayal, love and superstition. 

Locked away in a tower, growing to womanhood, Margherita sings in the hope that someone will hear her. One day, a young man does ... 

Three women, three lives, three stories, braided together to create a compelling tale of desire, obsession, black magic and the redemptive power of love.

From Kate Forsyth:

I began by wanting to retell Rapunzel as a historical novel ... as if it had really happened. So I began to wonder about the source of the tale ... who first wrote it?  

I began to research the sources and and so stumbled upon the life of Charlotte-Rose de Caumont de la Force, one of the most fascinating women ever forgotten by history. Her story was just a gift to a novelist. It had everything ... romance, intrigue, drama, black magic ....  

I ended up doing my doctorate on Rapunzel, all my research was so interesting and no-one had ever really looked at it in so much depth before. 

THE WILD GIRL
The untold true love story of Wilhelm Grimm and Dortchen Wild that lies behind the tales of the Brothers Grimm. It also weaves in many of the Grimm tales throughout.
(Released in Australia on March 3rd, 2014)

One of the great untold love stories - how the Grimm brothers discovered their famous fairy tales - filled with drama and passion, and taking place during the Napoleonic Wars.
Growing up next door to the Grimm brothers in Hesse-Cassel, a small German kingdom, Dortchen Wild told Wilhelm some of the most powerful and compelling stories in the famous fairy tale collection. 
Dortchen first met the Grimm brothers in 1805, when she was twelve. One of six sisters, Dortchen lived in the medieval quarter of Cassel, a town famous for its grand royal palace, its colossal statue of Herkules, and a fairytale castle of turrets and spires built as a love nest for the Prince-Elector's mistress. Dortchen was the same age as Lotte Grimm and the two became best friends. 

In 1806, Hesse-Cassel was invaded by the French. Napoleon created a new Kingdom of Westphalia, under the rule of his dissolute young brother Jérôme. The Grimm brothers began collecting fairy tales that year, wanting to save the old stories told in spinning-circles and by the fire from the domination of French culture.  

Dortchen's father was cruel and autocratic, and he beat and abused her. He frowned on the friendship between his daughters and the poverty-stricken Grimm Brothers. Dortchen had to meet Wilhelm in secret to tell him her stories. All the other sisters married and moved away, but Dortchen had to stay home and care for her sick parents. Even after the death of her father, Dortchen and Wilhelm could not marry – the Grimm brothers were so poor they were surviving on a single meal a day.  

After the overthrow of Napoleon and the eventual success of the fairy tale collection, Dortchen and Wilhelm were at last able to marry. They lived happily ever after with Wilhelm's elder brother Jakob for the rest of their lives.

 

TWO SELKIE STORIES FROM SCOTLAND 
A retelling of the Scottish fairy tales, The Selkie Bride and The Seal-Hunter and the Selkie
(Released in Australia in May 2014)
Illustrated by Fiona McDonald (Children's)
You can read a lovely guest post from Ms. Forsyth HERE on creating the book and on her ancestry which, apparently, might just involve a selkie!

From Kate Forsyth:

My grandmother’s grandmother was Scottish. Her name was Ellen Mackenzie and she grew up on the Black Isle in the Highlands of Scotland. Ellen’s mother was called Margaret McPhee, and as everyone in Scotland knows, the McPhee clan was descended from Selkies. The name McPhee is derived from an older version of the name MacDuffie, which comes from the Gaelic term MacDubhSithe, meaning ‘son of the dark fairy’. Family legend says that the first McPhee took a Selkie as a bride!    

...I always loved the tales of selkies, who were seals in the water and humans upon the land. It seemed the best of both worlds. I loved wondering if I had Selkie blood in me, and if one day I’d find the way to transform into a seal. 

(See? Seriously. Go read!)

DANCING ON KNIVES
Using the fairy tale of The Little Mermaid and referencing The Red Shoes
(Just released in Australia on June 2nd, 2014)

A damaged family and their generations of dangerous secrets 
At twenty, Sara is tormented by terror so profound she hasn't left her home in five years. Like the mermaid in the fairytale her Spanish grandmother once told her, Sara imagines she is dancing on knives. She feels suffocated by her family, especially her father – the famous artist Augusto Sanchez – whose volcanic passions dominate their lives. 
Then one stormy night, her father does not come home. His body is found dangling from a cliff face. Astonishingly, he is still alive, but the mystery of his fall can only be solved by the revelation of long-held family secrets.
At once a suspenseful murder mystery and a lyrical love story, Dancing on Knives is about how family can constrict and liberate us, how art can be both joyous and destructive, and how strength can be found in the unlikeliest places.

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You can see more information about Ms. Forsyth's books at the Random House Australia site HERE.

Ms. Forsyth's books have been reviewed all over the internet so there are plenty of opinions out there letting you know how much they love her work. She's been interviewed in a number of places as well so you can glean little bits of information about her research and process if you do a quick search but best of all, there's a video (though 46ish minutes, the time goes quickly listening to her!) in which Ms. Forsyth talks about Bitter Greens and The Wild Girl.

Have a listen (& a look):

She also just wrote a very interesting post on the history of Sleeping Beauty from Troylus and Zellandine (around 1300) to Matthew Bourne's recent ballet and the recent Disney revisioning in Maleficent, including a brief look at criticism of the tale. It's very comprehensive yet easy to read and includes her favorite novel versions of the tale. While I wasn't surprised to find Jane Yolen's Briar Rose there (with a WWII setting) I was pleased to find Adele Geras' Watching the Roses there (a lovely device throughout is including descriptions of various rose varieties that ultimately provide a subtle commentary on the story). You can find the post HERE.

Kate Forsyth

Ms. Forsyth can be found all over the place speaking on fairy tales these days. Whether it's with regard to her books and work, or discussing the importance of fairy tales with world renowned fairy tale scholar, Professor Jack Zipes, discussing the relevance of fairy tales in the 21st century on the radio, or being involved in a lively discussion panel for the Australian Fairy Tale Society, I have a feeling we will see even more fairy tale inspired work from her. With her enthusiastic fan following, including many among the young adult crowd (though her books aren't specifically YA), you know that she's doing a lot of good in having people consider fairy tales, their importance and their relevance.

I have a feeling... the best is yet to come.

Kate Forsyth's website and wonderful blog is HERE (she's also in the Other Fairy Tale News Sources blogroll on the right of the page here at OUABlog).
She can also be found on Twitter HERE.
And her Facebook page is HERE.

For Australian buyers, Booktopia is recommended. For the UK and US, Amazon.com. Some of her many awards are listed below.

TWO SELKIE TALES - released May 2014

DANCING ON KNIVES - releaseD June 2014

THE WILD GIRL - voted the Most Memorable Love Story of 2013 by Australians

BITTER GREENS - shortlisted for the 2012 Aurealis Award, the Ditmar Award & the Norma K. Hemming Award, for which it received an Honourable Mention 

THE PUZZLE RING - shortlisted for 2009 Aurealis Award & named an Unsung Hero of 2009 

THE GYPSY CROWN - won the 2007 Aurealis Award & was nominated for a CYBIL Award

THE LIGHTNING BOLT - named a CBCA Notable Book in 2007

THE CURSED TOWERS - shortlsted for the 1999 Aurealis Award

DRAGONCLAW - shortlisted for the 1997 Aurealis Award