Fairy Tale Review Archive
Browse submissions from past editions, web exclusive content, author Q&A, and more.
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
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.
No Girls Allowed
A blue-painted drawbridge. A frog pond moat. A two-story clubhouse on its own island deep in the vine-strangled woods, six bear cubs peering out from the wooden slats of windows and a lone green door.
(re)peat
The spears, the spires I aspired to be as reaching because what
did you know about tapers.
Oyster
Out of oxygen, algae, and a grain of calcium carbonate, the oyster came to be.
Birthstones
It is November.
I am mining crystal geodes
from the dead
Meet the Editors! Part One
With submission season close at hand, we thought it a good time to give you all a little glimpse into the people behind the curtain.
Juniper
The dream collectors’ truck stopped at each house on our street. There was a system: Mondays recycling, Tuesdays dreams, Wednesdays general trash.
An Update & An Apology
It’s time for an update on where we stand, and where we’re headed next.
Gifts from the Sea
At summer’s end, the seaside town celebrated its annual festival. After all the bathers had gone home, some men carried the mikoshi shrine through the streets, while others beat the taiko drums.
The Winners of the 2017 Fairy Tale Review Awards
Our heartiest congratulations to Eric Schlich, winner of the prose contest, and Mary Haidri, winner of our poetry contest!
De vilde svaner (Wild Swans)
That first time I saw myself miraculous, we baked swan-fat
into bread when Satan whispered
The Girl, the Wolf, the Crone
More than once there was a soon-to-be-old woman who had a loaf of bread, held it in her hands she did, and it was inconvenient to have a loaf of bread always sitting in her hands…
Pinnochia from Pleasure Island
Now I think of what I’d die to forget. Now I forget.
Where did I grow up, get out—was I as rich as a golden
yolk waiting to crack in the hay?
