Fairy Tale Review Archive
Once upon a time …
The practice of retelling fairy tales in the form of literary fiction is, if not quite hallowed, certainly established. The great Angela Carter’s revelatory 1979 story collection, “The Bloody Chamber” — a brocaded work of heady sensuality, intelligence and violence — remains the benchmark, but Kate Bernheimer’s Fairy Tale Review and the several excellent Bernheimer-edited anthologies spun off from it carry the standard forward. Those are just some of the more overt homages; Western literature owes as much to fairy tales as it does to Greek myth and the Bible.
-The New York Times
The Magic Bangle | Shastri Akella
Kartik makes a decision the day his father strikes him: on workday evenings and weekends he’ll pretend he’s a tourist in his hometown. His real...
Submission Call | Vol. 20
Founding Editor Kate Bernheimer will edit the twentieth annual issue of Fairy Tale Review. Vol. 20 will not have a theme. We are looking for your...
2022 Pushcart Prize Nominees
As we come to the end of 2022, we’re pleased to announce our Pushcart Prize nominations from The Lilac Issue. They are:
Baby Picture
We burn his photo under the tree. My friend, I trust her witchcraft.
Two Poems | Brett Shaw
No wonder songs are so full of denial. And what
did you do about that?
Jacinda Speaks
My fifteenth summer, I poured tears from two earthen pitchers and half the tears fell on dry ground and the other half spilled into the lake where the ripples spread like whispers in empty echo chambers.
‘My Time With the Angels’ and ‘Administrative Assistant’
I climbed the beanstalk, up and up, to the realm
Of pendulous curtains.
The Listening Tree
What made me want him? That supple, brutal kingsnake of a boy, wine-lipped and longhaired.
While Drinking Sangria
You resemble an angel created in a landfill.
Genie in Pieces
Father is the name for what guards the front door. The world outside is full of noise. A truck, a lawnmower, a dog, and then another.
‘Mus Maximus’ and ‘Venice’
In Pompeii we didn’t distinguish rats
from mice.
Avenue
The doctor delivers the diagnosis. He tells Gulisa, ‘It could be worse.’
graverobber’s ballad
bifurcating like a heart would/night scatters into pieces/reassembled like a girl should/be I tug the laces/of my boots and hold the shadows
The Winners of the 2019 Flash Fairy Tale Contest
On February 26, 2019, we asked our Twitter followers to tell us the biggest and most beautiful stories they could within Twitter's longer, and more...
Diptych: The Bunch, Your Duck/Dog
One day, we came home from a walk in the woods and found something waiting for us. It wasn’t a this, or a that, or a they; it was a bunch.
