Terri Windling's Blog, page 233

Friday's recommended reading:

This week's magpie gleanings...

Lev Grossman, author of The Magicians, discusses fantasy and longing on his writing blog.

Adam Gopnik discusses J.R.R. Tolkien and Christopher Paolini in The New Yorker. 

Romy Oltuski looks at famous author's harshest rejection letters in The Atlantic.

Author and academic Kat Howard discusses being a writer at Strange Ink.

Author, artist, and publisher Erzebet YellowBoy Carr has a very good post on working from home at I Saw the Angel.

Theodora Goss (author of The Thorn and the Blossom) discusses searching and transformation, and being a heroine, on her writing blog.

Keren David (author of Lia's Guide to Winning the Lottery) discusses authors who use initials rather than a gender-specific first name at An Awfully Big Blog Adventure. Ellen Renner (author of Castle of Shadows) responds.

Colleen Mondor discusses  her new book The Map of My Dead Pilots, at John Scalzi's Whatever -- and also reviews Susan Cooper's The Magic Maker at Chasing Ray.

Katherine Langrish begins her delightful "Jason and the AgonyAunts" series at Seven Miles of Steel Thistles; and Howard and Rex kick their heels while awaiting editorial feedback at John Barleycorn Must Die.

Sam Chaltain discusses art in the ownership society (and Brett Cook's "Reflections of Healing" project) on The Huffington Post site; and Stephanie Levy talks to Portland-based artist Cathy McMurry at Artists Who Blog.

More art recommendations:  "Old Lace" on Donna Q.'s Lens and Pen; "Zafta" by Lori Fields at Saints, Warriors, Tigers, Lovers, Flowers, Art; and "Voyage of the Snail Queen" by Ilene Winn-Lederer at Imaginarius.

Poetry recommendation: "Spring?" by Jason Primm, in the current issue of Umbrella (via Sharyn November). Not exactly seasonal, but lovely.

Fiction recommendations: "Ninety-nine Weeks: A Fairy Tale" by Ursula K. Le Guin, on the Book View Cafe blog; and "" by Ellen Kushner in Fantasy Magazine. (There's also an interview with Ellen in the same magazine, and a related article on "The Pen and the Sword" by Kat Howard.) Speaking of Ellen, the audio version of her brilliant first novel,  Swordspoint, is finally out, as part of the new "Neil Gamain Presents" series. It was created in an unusual manner, which you can read all about here.

Folklore: Andy Letcher reports on a medieval fayre in Shropshire; Jessica Benko discusses life among the reindeer herders in Norway; and there's a podcast of a discussion of folklore in the Phillipines (from the Manilla International Literary Festival 2011) at Charles Tan's Bibliophile Stalker.

Threads: There's a post on Brooke Shaden's Pre-Raphaelite Fashion Shoot at The Beautiful Necessity, and a magical Alexander Mcqueen dress at Bohemea (via Lori Fields). Angela Bell recommends some fabulously romantic clothes from France at Bright Star, and Roman K. looks at folk costume of the Caucasion region at Folk Costume & Embroidery.

News from our village:

The Chagford Filmmaking Group's latest project, "The Ballad of Mary Whyddon," has been profiled in The Western Morning News; and a brand new trailer for the film can be viewed here. The CFG was established by harpist/composer/director Elizabeth-Jane Baldry in order to get young people in our village involved with making fairy-tale films, both in front of and behind the camera. (Not-so-young villagers are involved with the CFG too -- including my mother-in-law Jenny Gayton, who worked on the costumes for "Mary Whyddon.") Visit the CFG's charming website for more information about this nonprofit, all-volunteer group of magic makers.

Juliette Mills has a beautiful photo essay, "Brothers," on the Burn Magazine website (I particularly love the 4th photo); artist Virginia Lee has posted some terrific pen-and-ink drawings; artist Danielle Barlow introduces the latest member of her family: Will, a handsome gypsy cob; and naturalist Nick Baker recommends his 5 top wildlife books for Christmas. Plus: there's lovely new work up for sale in the Etsy shops of Virginia Lee and David Wyatt. And all three Frouds (Brian, Wendy, and Toby) have a major exhibition running right now at the Animazing Gallery in New York City. (For everyone who can't make it to New York, the art can be viewed online here. Go marvel.)

Finally, I want to say "thank you" again to everyone who's been involved with auction over on LJ: including the kind folks donating things, the kind folks bidding on them, and the supremely kind folks who created the auction to begin with. I wish I could tell you more about what prompted this, but there are legal reasons why I can't publically discuss the specifics of what my family and I are dealing with right now. But what I can say is that I'm overwhelmed by this amount of support, which has come as a real surprise. It means a great deal.

Have a good weekend, everyone.

Images: The first two photos: Tilly seated near the delightfully ramshackle gate of a nearby sheep field. Third photo: from the "Ballad of Mary Whyddon" film shoot, from The Chagford Filmmaking Group. Last photo: the river valley near the Dartmoor village of Belstone, by Victoria Windling-Gayton. (Click on the image to make it larger -- it's pretty gorgeous at full size.)

The winds of autumn

"Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul."  ~John Muir

"One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.  ~William Shakespeare

Images above: "Princess in the Fields at Twilight" by Edmund Dulac, Tilly in the autumn leaves, "Grannonia and the Fox" by Warwick Goble, autumnal mice by Charles Robinson.

Inspiring Women: Phoebe Traquair & Jane Yolen

Phoebe Anna Traquair (1852-1936), who is celebrated today as "the first important professional woman artist of Scotland,"  was actually born and raised in Ireland, and studied art at the Royal Dublin Institute. She moved to Edinburgh, at the age of 21, upon her marriage to Scottish palaeontologist J. Ramsay Traquair (whom she'd met on an assignment drawing fossil fish), and it's there that she established her long, productive art career, and raised her three children.

A central figure in the Scottish Arts & Crafts movement at the end of the 19th century, Phoebe is often associated with "Glasgow Girls" (despite being a generation older than that group of artists, and based in a city farther north),  for her work was shaped by some of the same influences: the Pre-Raphaelite art movement in England, the Art Nouveau movement on the Continent, traditional Celtic illumination and design, and the mural paintings of the Italian Renaissance. Like Jessie M. King or the Macdonald sisters, Traquair pursued her creative vision through a variety of fields: easel painting, mural painting, manuscript illumination, illustration, leather tooling & book cover design, enamelling, and embroidery among them. Although the range of her work is impressive to us today, the ease with which she moved between fine and applied arts counted against her back in 1900, when her nomination to the all-male Royal Academy was abruptly turned down. (She was not, they informed her, "an artist by profession.") Twenty years later, she was finally named the SRA's first honorary woman member.

 

My own introduction to the art of Phoebe Traquair came, years ago, from another Inspiring Woman: writer, editor, folklorist, teacher, lecturer, storyteller and "mythic mentor"  Jane Yolen. Like Phoebe, Jane followed a scientist husband to Scotland (albeit somewhat later in life), where she now makes her home for part of each year; like Phoebe, she raised three children while simultaneously building a distinguished career; and like Phoebe, she works her singular vision into a wide variety of creative forms. I can't imagine that anyone reading this blog needs an introduction to Jane's glorious, multi-award-winning work; your bookshelves are probably already packed with her mythic novels for children and adults, her story and poetry collections, her picture books, her anthologies, her folk and fairy tale compilations, her books about writing and the importance of stories...over three hundred volumes in all. (If, however, through some strange chance you've not encountered Jane Yolen's work before, you can read one of her fairy-tale-inspired stories here , and her poetry here, here, and here.)

I was inspired by Jane before I ever met her, awed by her ability to create original fairy tales that read with the understated lyricism and emotional power of the classics, re-told for generations. A publishing colleague introduced us in the early 1980s, knowing me to be an admirer of Jane's tales for children. I was a painfully young book editor back then, still wet behind the ears and trying desperately not to show it. When Jane kindly agreed to write a story for an an adult fantasy anthology I was working on (and, eventually, a novel based on that story: the extraordinary Cards of Grief), I was thrilled beyond measure. It was the start of a working relationship that has continued to this day. (Better still, it was the start of our long friendship.)

Here is why Jane inspires me most: She lives an art-filled and vibrant life, one that is richly colored by family and friends, full of travel and worldy experience and deep, daily communion with nature...and yet, despite this full and busy schedule, Jane never strays very far from her core as a writer. She is always spinning tales, always weaving words and images together on the page or screen, always transforming the things she thinks about, feels, and imagines into stories and into books. She teaches, she mentors, she raises kids and grand-kids...all the things that could so easily drain her of the time, energy, and focus needed for creation...and yet she never stops writing. She honors her Muse. She honors the tales that build up inside her by giving them the time and serious attention that they deserve. And that, dear Reader, is not always easy for women. Hell, that's not always easy for anyone. Yet Jane has been doing it steadily, expertly, and beautifully for four decades now.

After all these years, I still don't quite know how she does it. It's a kind of magic, I suppose...which Jane (true to her word) touches lightly, and then passes on to the rest of us.

All of the images above are by Phoebe Anna Traquair. Visit the Mansfield Traquair Trust page to learn more about the preservation of her famous murals at the Catholic Apostolic Church in New Town, Edinburgh; and the National Library of Scotland site to view her illuminated mansuscript of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's "Sonnets from the Portuguese."

Counting Crows

I'll have a proper post up later this morning. I'm running a little late (or, rather, hopping-on-one-foot a little late, because I stupidly managed to sprain my ankle over the Thanksgiving weekend)...but in the meantime:

All readers living here in the south-west of England are cordially invited to gig above. The Nosy Crows consists of song-writer extraordinaire Jenny Dooley (vocals), painter Steve Dooley (on percussion), book illustrator David Wyatt (on lead guitar and bouzouki), and my husband Howard (on vocals and rhythm guitar), with an occasional surprise guest sitting in.

Perhaps we'll see some of you there on Friday night? I'll be the one with the limp....

Counting Blessings

As I work from the living-room sofa today (with my swollen foot propped up and a little black dog close by, performing her healing magic), I am amazed, moved, honored, and humbled by this, organized by close friends and colleagues who have the biggest hearts in the Whole Wide World. Once again I am reminded of what an extraordinary community we're all a part of (including you, dear Reader) here in the Mythic Arts/Fantasy/Speculative Fiction field. In the middle of what has been, admittedly, a very rough season for me and my family, I feel incredibly blessed today. A heartfelt thank you to all involved.

Tunes for a Monday Morning

Above: Rich Thomas, lead singer and song-writer for Brother & Bones, performs his gorgeous song "Gold and Silver" on the BBC .  Based here in the West Country (on the coast of Cornwall), Brother & Bones is a shape-shifting group of musicians, artists, and film-makers who come together for a variety of creative projects, with music at the center. On stage, the band ranges from an accoustic three-piece to an electrified five-piece and all the way up to a 12-piece mini-orchestra, performing songs whose influences range from roots and folk to blues and rock.

In the video below, the three-man core of Brother & Bones (Rich Thomas, Si Robinson, and Robin Howell-Sprent) perform an accoustic version of their song "Back to Shore" on the BBC . 

For more Brother & Bones, at the electrified end of the spectrum, try their new video for "Hold Me Like The Sun" (directed by Luke Pilbeam) and the plugged-in version of "Back to Shore" (recorded earlier this year at a farm in Cornwall).

(via Andrew Sullivan)

(via Andrew Sullivan)

Thanks Giving

I'm away for the next few days, so I want to wish all you Americans (and fellow American ex-pats) a wonderful Thanksgiving tomorrow. I've been thinking about what Thanksgiving means to me...and the "picture-story" above is the result. (If you have any trouble reading the words, you can click on the photo to make it larger, and then click again to make it larger still.)

One of the many things I'm thankful for is the international Mythic Arts community -- by which I mean everyone who writes or paints or performs or teaches or simply reads and loves myth-inspired art -- which includes all you kind folks who take the time to stop by this blog...so here's a raising of the glass to you.

I'll be back next week, with more posts on Inspiring Women, more On Your Desk photos, more picture-stories  and other sundry things in store. 'Til then, as master myth-maker Jane Yolen says, "Touch magic, pass it on."

The Root Tribe

"To the great tree-loving fraternity we belong. We love trees with universal and unfeigned love, and all things that do grow under them or around them - the whole leaf and root tribe."
- Henry Ward Beecher

"At night I dream that you and I are two plants / that grew together, roots entwined, / and that you know the earth and the rain like my mouth, /since we are made of earth and rain." - Pablo Neruda

Tunes for a Monday Morning

I'm getting back on my feet after a week of flu, so here's some fabulous music to kick out the jams: Mumford & Sons (the English folk-rock band) with Dawes (the American folk-rock band) performing "When my Time Comes" at the WNPR World Cafe 20th Anniversary Celebration in Philadelphia a few weeks ago. Oh lordy, how I wish I'd been there....

For more Mumford & Sons, check out their moody, broody, and all-too-brief new song, "The Enemy," below. It was created for Andrea Arnold's new film adaptation of Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights.