Csenge Virág Zalka's Blog, page 85

The princess is a boy: Gender, sex and folktales

I have repeatedly told people that I have this list on my English blog and have repeatedly been reminded that I don't (I wrote it in Hungarian). So, this is a post that should have been created a long time ago. Sorry for the wait.
This is a far-from-complete list of traditional stories that I have encountered that have something to do with sex (as in, someone's biological), gender, sexuality, and

Yes, Grimm fairy tales are dark, and we like them that way

News about a new edition of the Grimm fairy tales have been circling the Internet and popping up consistently on my Facebook wall. Headlines include:

Grimm Brothers' fairy tales have blood and horror restored to them in new translation (The Guardian)

New Translation of Grimm's Fairy Tales Restores the Gore and Horror (io9)

First Edition of all the Original Grimm's Fairy Tales will leave in all

Kentucky Storytelling Conference 2014 - Fun with friends

It was so nice to be back in a place that has sweet tea, Southern accents, and three-dimensional geography.
And even better to be among people of story.

I drove down to Kentucky with Kevin Cordi, and as it happens when storytellers travel together, the time zone wormhole was not the only thing that made the road seem shorter. We arrived just in time for the Friday night concert. Both featured

NaNoWriMo: The Good, The Bad, and The Story

I don't even remember when I first heard about National Novel Writing Month. It must have been the first year I was studying in the USA (that is 2007) and I remember liking the idea. I was a published author by then, so I already knew an important thing about myself: I simply cannot write alone. Maybe this stems from also being a performing storyteller, being used to constant audience feedback,

Call for Participants for a Survey on Bards and Storytellers in Role-Playing Games!

Call
to gamers in the tabletop role-playing field: 

I am looking for participants for
a research project on Bards and other storyteller-type characters! My name is
Csenge Zalka, and I am currently a PhD student at Bowling Green State
University. I am conducting a research project on how people play
storyteller-type characters, and what they like or dislike about them.




If
you have ever

MythOff Bowling Green: Newbies take the cake!

We had Bowling Green's (and, in fact, Ohio's) second ever MythOff event tonight!
And we saw that it was fun.



The venue was brand new: We have moved to Café Havana, the home of the Bowling Green Open Mic Night, and were greeted with the roaring sound of delicious fresh-made smoothies. Thus, MythOff was preceded by Smoothie Hour, until everyone had ordered all the heavenly beverages of their

Read some quality historical fiction today!

I found out big news today: Robert Merle's Fortune de France series, one of the great reading adventures of my youth, is finally being published in English! I wanted to share this with you English-speaking readers, and make a case for adding this book to your shelves.
Not too long ago I wrote a post about 6 Books that Need an English Translation a.s.a.p. My prayers (or whining?) seem to have

5 Things to Love About the SCA

When you fill out the Ultimate Geek Test (which you should), you get extra points for being in the SCA, and even more extra points for holding an office in the SCA. In mainstream culture, being a member of the Society for Creative Anachronism is usually seen as an extremely geeky/nerdy activity. Which is totally fine with me, because I am a nerd. But there are also a lot of stereotypical ideas

Long stories, short stories, true stories - NSN Conference, Mesa, AZ

While I did not get to live blog everything that happened in these past 5 days of the 2014 NSN conference, now that I am sitting at the airport gate I feel like a report is in order.
Short version: The NSN conference, as usual, was epic.
Long version:

I feel like this year's #NSNStoryCon had a very balanced lineup of workshops. The proverbial pendulum that swings between the extremes of "

Just What ARE You Anyway? - A folktale about gender and confusion

Today I found a collection of gitano (Gypsy) folktales in Spanish; I bought it a couple of years ago at the Maratón de Cuentos in Guadalajara, read a few of the stories, and then got distracted by another continent. Browsing through it this time I came across a folktale that caught my interest for its treatment of gender roles and expressions.
There is a lot to say about gender fluidity and