Fairy Tale Review Press publishes occasional books of fiction and poetry. We do not accept unsolicited submissions.
Now in print! Translated from the Spanish by Toshiya Kamei. "Sagrario died in May, after much suffering." So begins Espido Freire's haunting novel IRLANDA, with a sentence that is bright and troubled at once, just like its hero. After the death of her sister Sagrario, young Natalia has been sent by her mother to spend the summer helping her two teenage cousins (Roberto and the beautiful, "perfect" Irlanda) do minor repairs to the family's decaying country house. Its fairy-tale "tower and chapel...stood crumbling, crawling with vermin." Jealousy, displacement, and loss: these classic themes are twisted and laid bare in a pristinely told mystery story. This beautifully translated book is the first to be published in the English language by one of Spain's youngest and most celebrated authors.
"Exquisite...fascinating...stunning. IRLANDA unfurls like a rose with a ring of gleaming white teeth inside, poised to snap."—Stacey Richter
About the author: Espido Freire was born in Bilbao, Spain, in 1974. She is the author of several novels, including Donde siempre es octubre (1999), Melocotones helados (winner of the 1999 Premio Planeta), Nos espera la noche (2003), Soria Moria (2007), and La flor del norte (2011). Her novels have been translated into over a dozen languages, including French, German, and Portuguese.
Songs For Fairytales
SONGS FOR FAIRY TALES is a CD compilation gathered for Fairy Tale Review by Kate Bernheimer. Ranging from haunting lullabies to catchy pop songs, the contributions reflect the diverse, gorgeous themes of fairy tales and their appeal for an incredible range of contemporary artists. A treat from Willy Vlautin, Kaitlyn ni Donovan, Sunset Valley, Liz Brown, Megan Pickerel, Little Sue, Little Canada, Kenneth and Melissa Buck, Michael J. Lee, Authros, Hypnogaga, Alyson Greenfield, The Figments, National Mattress Company and your friends at Fairy Tale Review.
THEY MET IN A DREAM by Jennifer Parks
WHITEWORK by Ashley McWatersPraise for WHITEWORK:
Numerous poets have tried to unite Sappho's body with Dickinson's mind; only Ashley McWaters has succeeded.
--Mark YakichWhitework is utterly original, and exquisitely made.
--Arielle Greenberg
The poems in Whitework, Ashley McWaters’ debut collection, explore sewing as synecdoche for the whole of women’s work, particularly the creative work traditionally deemed acceptable for women. Braiding together the myth of Athena and Arachne, a Victorian teacher-pupil relationship, and the act of writing itself, this pristine and haunted collection explores concerns about ego and alter-ego, the shock of beauty, and the nature of female creation. Devoted to formal experiment, and taking up erasure (both textual and historical) as a central motif, the book acts simultaneously as homage and artifact. At once preserving the language of the female and its historic omission, Whitework celebrates the unspoken through supernatural means---with the muted vocabulary of a Poetry Queen. If you think it’s gentle, do look again; McWaters has a sharp needle. Reader, beware.
Ashley McWaters has an MFA in poetry from the University of Alabama. Her work has appeared in DIAGRAM, Painted Bride Quarterly, Hunger Mountain, Northwest Review, Spinning Jenny, and Caketrain, among others. She grew up in Memphis, and lives in the South with her husband Scott and their children, Posey and Lucian.
CHANGING by Lily Hoang
WINNER OF A 2009 PEN/BEYOND MARGINS AWARD
Praise for CHANGING:
"This is an impossible thing, a dream object"
--Joyelle McSweeney, author of FLET.
At once a fairy tale, a fortune, and a translation told through the I Ching, Vietnamese-American author Lily Hoang's CHANGING is a ghostly and miniature novel. Both mysterious and lucid at once, the book follows Little Girl down a century-old path into her family's story. Changing is Little Girl's fate, and in CHANGING she finds an unsettling, beautiful home. Like a topsy-turvy horoscope writer, Hoang weaves a modern novella into the classical form of the I Ching. In glassine sentences, fragmented and new, Jack and Jill fall down the hill over and over again in intricate and ancient patterns. Here is a wonder story for 21st century America. Here is a calligraphic patchwork of sadness.
CHANGELING by Joy WilliamsThis 30th Anniversary Edition of The Changeling by Joy Williams includes a Foreword by Rick Moody. An overlooked and spectacular novel, The Changeling is a visionary fairy tale, a work of mythic genius. Terrifying, poetic, revelations follow The Changeling’s abandoned heroine Pearl everywhere she goes, whether by air, land, or sea. Joy Williams has won the Rea Award for the Short Story, the Harold and Mildred Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts & Letters, among other prizes. Her first novel, State of Grace, was a National Book Award Finalist. The 3oth Anniversary Edition seeks to reintroduce this novel to contemporary readers as one of the most original and alarming fairy-tale books ever written.
PILOT (“Johann the Carousel Horse”) by Johannes GöranssonPilot ("Johann the Carousel Horse") is an assemblage, a book of nursery rhymes gone wrong in translation. Its strange characters, abandoned from other texts, include Lilja, the Pearls of Stockholm and assorted imperiled girls. Here, in Johannes Göransson's glittering exocity, they find a new and beautifully stitched home. Göransson was born and raised in Skåne, Sweden, but has lived in the US for many years. He is co-editor of Action Books and has translated the work of Aase Berg, Henry Parland, Ann Jäderlund and other Swedish and Finland Swedish poets.
