Mythic Fiction Links

[Odette]

I wanted to share one of my favorite blogs - Into the Hermitage, the beautiful and magical creation of traveling artist Rima.

In today's post, she talks of visiting with Endicott creator Terri Windling.
http://intothehermitage.blogspot.com/

Are there mythic arts-related websites or blogs you read that you'd like to share?

[Kay]

Thanks so much for posting this, it's fabulous.

[Ramona]

Oh, this is delicious! Thanks, Odette! I'd like to share this site: http://www.dailywriting.net/. It's the Soul Food Cafe, a free site for artists and writers with its own internal mythology and endless paths to explore in a delightful fantasy world. The creator, Heather Blakey, is famous Down Under for her creative writing programs in schools.

[Odette]

Thanks, Ramona! It looks like a fun site to explore.

[Nat]

Thanks Odette & Ramona!

[Odette]

For those of you who keep paper journals and/or reading logs, here's an online source for fairy tale-themed blank books, (not to mention t-shirts, decorative boxes, stickers, canvas bags & other merchandise with golden age fairy tale illustrations).
http://www.cafepress.com/surlalunefai...
As an added bonus, purchases support the SurLaLune fairy tale website.

Baba Studio carries lots of lovely fairy tale-themed items:
http://baba-store.com/index.php
fyi: I found their website through the blog of Endicott's Midori Snyder:
http://msnyder.typepad.com/the_labyri...

note: I'm not affiliated with any of these websites or stores - I just like them. :)

[Odette]

Here's an interesting article about the ancient origins of fairy tales.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/sc...

Happy Fall everyone.

[Kim]

Great links, thanks Odette!

[Emilie]

there's an exhibition at the victoria and albert children's museum called Wonderland that focuses on art with themes of fairy tales, myths and folklore from around the world.

http://www.vam.ac.uk/moc/whats_on/tem...

[Kay]

Oh, I wish we could go see that... looks wonderful.

[Odette]

"Why do the National Book Awards bar fairy tales?"
http://www.salon.com/books/literary_p...

[Emilie]

Perhaps there was a rash of shameless Grimm Brothers knockoffs in the 1950s, when the awards were launched?

(smiles)
thanks for posting the link, odette.

[Odette]

Just noticed that the News From Endicott blog is still (very occasionally) active:
http://endicottstudio.typepad.com/

The old archives are also still online & are a great resource for info about mythic arts film, music, interviews, visual artists, websites & more:
http://endicottstudio.typepad.com/end...

And don't forget about the personal blogs of Endicott founders Terri Windling & Midori Snyder, which are always filled with lots of information about the mythic arts:
http://windling.typepad.com/blog/

http://www.msnyder.typepad.com/

[Bill]

I've taken advantage of this and hope it's OK to post here. For anyone interested in Terri's art she is selling off some prints for only $20 here:
http://www.etsy.com/shop/Windling

[Odette]

Thanks, Bill!
I love Terri's art. I treasure the prints I have & I really hope someday she creates a picture storybook of her bunny children.

[Emilie]

i'd love a picture storybook of her bunny girls too. thanks odette and bill for the links.

[Odette]

Just discovered that Endicott author (& Endicott group member!) Kij Johnson has a new story posted:
http://www.tor.com/stories/2010/11/po...

fyi: If you go to the Endicott blog website
http://endicottstudio.typepad.com/end...
and click on any of the author or artist names to the left of the page, it takes you to their individual website - a great way to keep track of your favorites & find new authors & artists you love.

[Odette]

Something interesting:
The Strange, Beautiful, Subterranean Power of Fairy Tales:
A Forum Moderated by Kate Bernheimer
http://centerforfiction.org/magazine/...

[Emilie]

thanks odette! this is very interesting.

and i love the quote "consolation of imaginary things is not imaginary consolation".

[Odette]

I like that too, Emilie.

[Odette]

There's a story today on NPR about the Endicott book "The Saskiad" by Brian Hall.
http://www.npr.org/2011/10/05/1408128...

[Odette]

Mythic Imagination Institute Update:

And some mornings I'd wake in daylight to find my body covered with paw prints in blood: I looked as though I'd been painted with roses.
--Annie Dilliard in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

"The new Mythic Imagination Magazine is out. Focusing on Fairy Tales, this first issue in our Year of the Roses series, finds us deep in the woods even as May is blooming. Beauty and danger chase each other through the old stories and while we sit enthralled by the tale, our ancestors are telling us how the world is and what to do to survive.

Terri Windling draws out many of these themes in the company of Heinz Insu Fenkl, Carolyn Dunn and master storyteller Gayle Ross, in the talk Sleeping Beauty Awakes.

The Subject Was Roses is covered in the second skins of our clothing semaphore as guest editor Dahna Koth illustrates the old stories with the latest catwalk presentations that stalk our psyches. Lawrence Schimel graces us with three poems and we bring you more of the source material of the fairy tales themselves, right inside the issue."

Click here for The Subject was Roses

[Odette]

New article about Grimms’ Fairy Tales in the New Yorker this week:

Once Upon a Time
The lure of the fairy tale.
by Joan Acocella

[Emilie]

thanks for the link, odette. that's an interesting (and funny, at times) article.
"(Parents should simply not read it to children. If they give the child the book, they should get an X-Acto knife and slice the story out first.)"

i didn't know that the grimms tales were used as nazi propaganda. i didn't know what created the atmosphere in children's literature that maurice sendak was responding to, though i knew he was responding to what he saw as an inaccurate view of the experience of children.

i like how she challenges that even what we think of as the originals aren't originals, that they were shaped with a specific purpose and not just copied from the oral tradition.

it's interesting too, the time of the loss of oral storytelling because of changes in work, and how now we are losing some of certain kinds of stories and storytelling and it feels like a parallel to what we will choose to do when once again technology shifts things to favor a different kind of storytelling.

[Odette]

Another interesting NYT article. (This one will make all your mythic fiction reading feel virtuous. :) )

Your Brain on Fiction

[Odette]

Rescuing Wonderful Shivery Tales - Marina Warner

[Odette]

The November/December 2015 issue of Bookmarks magazine has a list of book recommendations of "Fairy Tales in Modern Fiction." It also has a story on "Literature of the New India."

[Odette]

I just saw a wonderful Irish animated film by the creator of The Secret of Kells - Song of the Sea.

It deals with the selkie legend and, like The Secret of Kells, it uses strikingly beautiful, highly-stylized animation art and haunting music in the soundtrack. It includes several characters from Irish mythology in addition to the selkie.

[Odette]

“Fairy tales on the printed page are finished, unchanging, canonical, anonymous. Fairy tales told aloud are fuzzy-edged, fluid, variable – and belong to the person who is telling them, for so long as they are upon his or her tongue.”

Seven Miles of Steel Thistles review – the meaning of fairy stories

[Katy]

Odette wrote: "“Fairy tales on the printed page are finished, unchanging, canonical, anonymous. Fairy tales told aloud are fuzzy-edged, fluid, variable – and belong to the person who is telling them, for so long ..."

That is a great thought.

[Odette]

I thought so too. :)

[Odette]

This looks interesting.

Tale of Tales — film review: ‘Macabre fantasy’