It would be astonishing if the thousands of traditional tales told across Europe didn’t include characters who could appeal to and satisfy the desire of women as well as men…
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Coming of Age as a Viking: Historical Children’s Books and Gender
“The culture was gradually changing. Geoffrey Trease usually teamed his heroes with an adventurous girl, and Rosemary Sutcliff sometimes threw in a significant female character, like the fierce child Regina in ‘Dawn Wind’ – but the default option for historical children’s fiction remained male, and it sometimes seemed as if the most exciting thing to happen to a girl in all of history had been when Flora MacDonald rowed Bonnie Prince Charlie over the sea to Skye. You couldn’t have adventures in a skirt.”
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Myth and Fairy Tales at Tŷ Newydd
Recently back from the wonderful Tŷ Newydd Writing Centre in North Wales https://www.tynewydd.wales/ty-newydd/, where fellow author Catherine Fisher and I tutored a week-long course on Myth and Fairy Tales in…
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Fairy Tales at the BBC Proms
Talking fairy tales and folklore, fox spirits and feminism, giants and selkies – for the BBC Proms
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Proms Plus Talk on fairytales, August 18
Proms talk: Composer and author Kerry Andrew and writer Katherine Langrish explore the symbolism in fairy stories.
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My essay on the fairytale ‘Maid Maleen’ appears in ‘Gramarye’
A detailed examination of the Grimms’ version of ‘Maid Maleen’, a dark and serious tale of loss and abandonment which, with its threatened prince and active princess, frequently undercuts the accumulated cliches of the fairy tale while reminding us that those stereotypes are not as common as the general reader often assumes.
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