Showing posts with label women and fairy tales. Show all posts
Showing posts with label women and fairy tales. Show all posts

Tuesday, November 17, 2020

Online Event: "Women Who Run with the Wolves" by The Henry Moore Institute (Wed 18 Nov - Free!)

"Princess Furball" (Allerleirauh, a Grimms Fairy Tale) 2016 by Timea Tallian

The offerings on fairy tale studies online during the pandemic have been one of the very few bright spots of the pandemic. If you're serious about learning more on fairy tales and folktales, there are affordably priced events, programs, and courses happening almost every week at this point, as well as the occasional free one - like this event we're posting today. (The most difficult issue is having to choose which ones to go to and which to skip, while juggling full-time work and full-time homeschool all in one day!)

While this isn't focused on "the fairy tale", the talk will be of interest if you're at all familiar with Dr. Clariss Pinkola Estes, who uses a wide variety of fairy tales and folktales in her discussions, but it will be especially interesting to those who are drawn to the group of fairy tales that include Donkeyskin, All-Fur, Thousand Furs, Catskin and Allerleirauh.

As the information for the Women Who Run With the Wolves event is quite detailed we will just add the information below:

Women Who Run with the Wolves

by The Henry Moore Institute

Rachel Goodyear - Hoard (2020)
 A discussion about Paloma Varga Weisz's sculpture in relation to Clarissa Pinkola Estés' feminist study, Women Who Run with the Wolves. 

We are delighted to introduce a new online format for our rescheduled research events. You can now attend our series of lectures, symposia and discussions online. We invite you to watch recorded talks, submit your questions and attend a later live discussion.

"Dr Estes defined wildness as not uncontrolled behavior but a kind of savage creativity, the instinctual ability to know what tool to use and when to use it." - Dirk Johnson, The New York Times

This event brings together a diverse range of speakers to discuss the Henry Moore Institute's current exhibition, Paloma Varga Weisz: Bumped Body, in dialogue with Clarissa Pinkola Estés' renowned cult classic and revisionary feminist study, Women Who Run with the Wolves: Contacting the Power of the Wild Woman (1992).

Central to the research questions of the event is the place of feminism in contemporary art, as explored through the creative interpretation of its many methodologies.

Pre-recorded talks will cover psychoanalysis, metamorphosis, embodied storytelling, fairy tales and gender. Speakers are artists, choreographers, curators and literary scholars working both internationally and locally, offering a range of viewpoints and new interdisciplinary approaches to the interpretation of narrative sculpture.

We would like to thank Dr Catriona McAra of Leeds Arts University for convening the speakers and leading the event.

Programme
From 11 November
by Madchen Photography Studios

These talks are available to watch after registering for this event. You can watch them on our website, henry-moore.org/wolves, or here on Eventbrite by accessing the event portal (click the 'Access the event' button). You will need a password to watch them, which will be sent to you upon registering for the event (scroll down your confirmation email to the 'Additional Information' section).

Introduction: The Fur of the Fairy Tale - Dr Catriona McAra (Curator, Leeds Arts University)

Clothed (in) Animals: Contemporary Women Artists Reimagining Fairy-Tale Creatures - Dr Mayako Murai (Writer, Kanagawa University)

Beneath the Surface, A Vibration Through the Bones - Rachel Goodyear (Artist, Manchester)

The Shapeshifting Woman and Other Tales of Becoming - Hannah Buckley (Choreographer, Leeds)

by Katie Ponder
Wednesday 18 November, 6pm (please check the website to calculate the starting time for your timezone.)


A live discussion with speakers Dr Catriona McAra, Rachel Goodyear and Hannah Buckley. They will be answering any questions you might have once you've watched their individual talks. You can submit your questions live during the event or in advance. This session will take place on Zoom.

For much more additional information about the speakers, please check the event page HERE, where you can also REGISTER FOR FREE.

Wednesday, April 29, 2020

"Snow White, Rose Red and Other Tales of Kind Young Women" - Online Launch Party May 1st 6pm AEST (Friday Australia/Thursday US)

If you're a longtime reader you know that we in the Fairy Tale Newsroom are longtime fans of Australian fairy tale writer Kate Forsyth, who has created an amazing collection of historical novels with specific fairy tales at their center [and we personally adore The Rebirth of Rapunzel: A Mythic Biography of the Maiden in the Tower (2016), which explores the Rapunzel tale-type throughout history and includes all sorts of wonderful creative expressions, as well as a research-based exegesis!]. It's also no secret that we are continually drawn to the magic photographic illustrations of Australian artist Lorena Carrington, so it's a given that any collaboration between these two magical women is a must for us - and we're about to be treated with their third!

The third book of the Long Lost Fairy Tales Collection, a collaborative series by Australian writer Kate Forsyth and Australian artist Lorena Carrington, is going to have an online book launch that anyone from around the world can attend!

The book is titled Snow White, Rose Red and Other Tales of Kind Young Women.

The previous two in the popular series are:
  • Vasilisa the Wise and Other Tales of Brave Young Women
  • The Buried Moon and Other Tales of Bright Young Women
All are available through Serenity Press.

We've included a small selection of popular time zone, times below to give you a start on figuring out how to block it into your calendar.
Australian Eastern Standard Time - 6pm FRIDAY night
USA PST (Pacific Standard Time) - 1am FRIDAY early morning (late THURS.)
USA EST (Eastern Standard Time) - 4am FRIDAY super early
UK London Time - 9am FRIDAY
Moscow, Russia Time - 12pm (noon) FRIDAY


YOU CAN JOIN THE LAUNCH VIA FACEBOOK
(click image or link below):
Online link:
https://www.facebook.com/events/2345942522374686/

OR MAKE YOUR WAY STRAIGHT TO THE ZOOM ROOM AT THE SCHEDULED TIME HERE
(no Facebook required! Click image or link below)::
Online link:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/7588848380
Publisher's book description:
An enchanting collection of little known fairy tales about young women who prevail because of their kindness and compassion.Snow-White & Rose Red save an enchanted bear from an ungrateful goblin Marushka is sent to find strawberries in the snow by her cruel step-sister but wins the help of the Twelve Months Ailsa climbs Mischanter Mountain to rescue her sister, armed with nothing more than her sewing kit and her parents’ blessing Reinhilda outwits a witch and saves her sweetheart.A kind henwife helps Morag find a home for her family with the help of a magic pot. Agnes and a young Romany woman together overcome the curse of an enchanted cupBrigid honours a promise she made, even though it takes her to theunderworld and back.With an introduction by Isobelle Carmody, Snow White, Rose Red & Other Tales of Kind Young Women contains tales fromGermany, Slovenia, Ireland and the Scottish Travellers.It will transform the way you think about fairy tales.
And here is a lovely sneak peek inside the covers!




Can you guess which fairy tales Kate and Lorena are retelling in this volume?
Hope to see some of you Friday at the launch!
(Or Thursday - whatever day it will be where you are!)
*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *
A small selection of the many fairy tale books by Kate Forsyth:
 Fairy tale art - in book form! - by artist Lorena Carrington:

Thursday, May 18, 2017

In 'Losing Time' Red Has To Choose A Path... (Interview w/Director Lisa Stock)

A girl in red, chased by the Wolf of time: which path will she choose?

In Lisa Stock's latest magic realist film, 'Losing Time', which has just become available for the public to view, she asks the question: "If all time were to stop, would you start it again?"

Intrigued by the lovely images, and very different concept, we thought we'd ask Lisa Stock, of InByTheEye, who created, wrote and directed the film, a little about it. 

OUABlog: Congratulations on your new film, and thank you for visiting OUABlog today to talk a little about it. You chose to dress your protagonist in a red coat on purpose. How do you see your new magic realism film reflecting the tale of Red Riding Hood?
Actress Heather Witherill plays a girl with a choice in 'Losing Time'.

Lisa Stock (InByTheEye): I did indeed dress her in red for a reason! While Red is different for everyone, a red cloak or coat suggests potential; potential choices, potential dangers, potential futures. Time, the most ancient of systems is found in the forest. In my film, the grandmother's wisdom comes through at the portal when she makes her decision. Like Red my heroine doesn't let the trappings of fear keep her from persevering.

OUABlog: How did you arrive at this idea?

Lisa Stock (InByTheEye):  As the film is part of the Danny Elfman Challenge we were to choose a piece of his music off the album "Rabbit and Rogue". I chose "Lyric". Listening to the music over and over gave me a sense of both whimsy and urgency, and I immediately saw this character running. Running for something, but obstacles in her way creating tension. I saw her being interrupted, I saw her falling, I saw things getting in her way and came to the idea that perhaps they were frozen in front of her and then the idea of time stopping came to me. So it was a little bit of a backward process.

OUABlog: The film fits well into the 'magic realist' genre, bringing elements of wonder and the supernatural to seemingly ordinary situations. It also seems, if you pardon the pun, very timely, in terms of where society is at right now. We see parallels to concerns about the planet, about people with opposing views not knowing how to get on, as well as the importance of getting back to basics - through those woods that are different for everyone - to figure out just how you feel about something - for clarity. What issues were you thinking about most when having your 'Red' enter the woods?

Lisa Stock (InByTheEye): It does feel to me as if we're on the verge of a new era - there's so much potential, like the burgeoning science generation, but also that bubbling epidemic of despair on so many fronts. We really are at a crossroads. Which path do we take? Especially in light of so much sorrow, worry and anger today, I wanted my Red to reflect that we had a choice - with a very good and positive option.

OUABlog: 'Losing Time' is part of the Danny Elfman Challenge, in which you had the opportunity to use some of Elfman's music score from 'Rabbit & Rogue'. How did it feel being able to use his music? And what happens now?

Lisa Stock (InByTheEye): The Danny Elfman Challenge is part of the LA Film Festival, and 'Losing Time' has been officially accepted and uploaded for voter input and panel judging. Our film, has had a wonderful response the last day or so since it's gone live, and we're thrilled. At this point we have a really good chance of being selected for the finals!


The lady in the clock comes to life
to alert our heroine that time has stopped.
I love this piece of music, but I'd be lying if I said it wasn't somewhat intimidating to be creating a unique film for an Elfman composition. I had Heather (the actress) listen to the music over and over again. We would listen to the particular part of the music that went with each scene before filming so she could have it in her head. If you watch closely, particularly on the bridge, her movements are almost dance-like and are going along with the music. I know that the music was supposed to be "the soundtrack" but to me it's very much a character in and of itself. It's almost like a narrator, leading her on from one moment to the next. To me, the music dictated this story and took me through the process of the idea. Part of the rules were that we were only permitted to edit the music in very minor ways, so I have only one cut. When I was listening to the piece early on I could hear and see that fall over and over and I wanted a hard 'stop' (with the music). The whole story stops because she suddenly is becoming frozen and maybe she's going to stop too. But then, in true Red style, she crawls on and keeps going. When she stands up at the portal, the music picks back up and keeps going. When she decides not to restart time, and lifts her hands on that final note of the music, I had her lengthen that movement to extend that final note into silence. Those images after seeing her lift her hands sort of carry the music on, even though you're no longer hearing it. 

Elfman is such a singular and inspiring artist, and it was such a pleasure and honor for me to be able to participate in this Challenge. It shows what a generous artist he is by extending a piece of his own artwork to others, complete strangers, to use in their own stories. That's not something you see very often.

As to 'what next', right now a panel of industry judges are selecting finalists - BUT the public gets a say too, and we'd love some help getting us into that final films selection, and it's very easy to do: all you have to do is vote for our film on THEIR website at the link below (it takes you directly to 'Losing Time', so no hunting required):


There's a 'like/heart' button right below the film and every click counts. Sharing helps too, of course, (the share wheel is next to the heart) and the following hashtags are really helpful for those sharing: #buzzchallenge #indi_8xcwv

OUABlog: We have one last question: why chocolate?

Lisa Stock (InByTheEye): *laughs* Because chocolate is pure happiness and no matter what there is always chocolate!

OUABlog: Thank you for talking with us today. We wish you every success with this lovely new take on our very versatile Red!

Tuesday, July 14, 2015

"The Wild Girl" by Kate Forsyth GIVEAWAY! (Entry details)

"The Brothers Grimm left one tale untold..."

Once upon a time there were six sisters.
The pretty one, the musical one, the clever one, the helpful one, the young one... 
And then there was the Wild one.

Dortchen Wild has loved Wilhelm Grimm since she as a young girl. Under the forbidding shadow of her father and the tyranny of Napoleon's army, the pair meet secretly to piece together a magical fairy tale collection.

The story behind the stories of the Brothers Grimm.

Thanks to the lovely folks at St. Martin's Press, we're having a GIVEAWAY! 

There's been a lot of buzz over the US release of Kate Forsyth's book The Wild Girl, including here at Once Upon A Blog. We've been treated to a wonderful review HERE and most especially an exclusive 'Behind the Pages' interview with author Kate Forsyth herself HERE (complete with photos from her notebooks!).

To enter the giveaway all you have to do is help spread the word about Kate Forsyth's new (US edition) book in some way via any form of social media:

1. Link to the interview or the review or this giveaway post via some form of social media. You can use:

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Tumblr
  • Pinterest
  • Instagram
  • YouTube
  • Any other social media platform!

2. Make sure your post is public so it can be verified as a valid entry. (This is especially important to double check if you're using Facebook. We had a number of entries in our last giveaway that couldn't be verified because we couldn't see them.)

3. Put the link, along with your name (especially important if you usually comment anonymously), in the comment section of this post at Once Upon A Blog.

4. Do this as many times as you wish BEFORE MIDNIGHT CA time on Friday July 31st, 2015 (ONE entry per social media platform per day please - we don't want to spam people!)

5. Check back on Saturday August 1st at the end of the day to see who the lucky winner is, which will be announced, once our elves have finished verifying all the entries!

I will be placing a pinned post with a link to these instructions at the top of the blog shortly, to stay until the deadline for your easy reference.

Have fun and good luck!

"The Wild Girl" - Review by Christie Pang

"The Wild Girl"

by Kate Forsyth

Review by Christie Pang
Editor's Note: Here is Christie's promised review! (It's worth the wait, believe me.) 

And stay tuned today for all the details to enter our GIVEAWAY of this book! (for US residents only due to shipping sorry.)
Jacket description: 

"Dortchen Wild fell in love with Wilhelm Grimm the first time she saw him.

Growing up in the small German kingdom of Hessen-Cassel in early Nineteenth century, Dortchen Wild is irresistibly drawn to the boy next door, the young and handsome fairy tale scholar Wilhelm Grimm. 

It is a time of War, tyranny and terror. Napoleon Bonaparte wants to conquer all of Europe, and Hessen-Cassel is one of the first kingdoms to fall. Forced to live under oppressive French rule, the Grimm brothers decide to save old tales that had once been told by the firesides of houses grand and small all over the land.

Dortchen knows many beautiful old stories, such as 'Hansel and Gretel', 'The Frog King' and 'Six Swans'. As she tells them to Wilhelm, their love blossoms. Yet the Grimm family is desperately poor, and Dortchen's father has other plans for his daughter. Marriage is an impossible dream.

Dortchen can only hope that happy endings are not just the stuff of fairy tales."
 
International covers for Australia & UK and audiobook cover 
“Wild by name and wild by nature,” Dortchen Wild was the childhood sweetheart of Wilhelm Grimm and the heroine of Kate Forsyth’s latest novel The Wild Girl. The book follows the life of this extraordinary woman who supplied the brothers with many of their famous tales. ‘Hansel and Gretel,' 'Rumpelstiltskin,' and 'Six Swans' are all part of the treasury the Grimm brothers seek to collect when Napoleon's war comes to Hesse-Cassel. For Dortchen, however, these tales are not a political response against the French, nor a means to turn her family's fortune, but a way to communicate to Wilhelm the hopes and fears of her love for him.

In many ways, Dortchen’s life can be seen as a parallel to the tales she shares. Similar to 'Aschenputtel' (Cinderella), Dortchen is practically a kitchen maid to her family, although her sisters are kind to her. Later, she finds transformation by donning a beautiful dress to gain Wilhelm's attention. More disturbing, however, is her similarity to 'All-Kinds-of-Fur'. For those not familiar with the tale, the conflict revolves around a king trying to marry his daughter and went through drastic revisions in the Grimms’ treasury.  It quickly becomes apparent that Dortchen’s father harbors abusive tendencies and later it turns toward incest. But unlike her fairy tale counterpart, escape is not easily forthcoming for Dortchen. For much of the novel, the psychological effects of sexual trauma hold Dortchen a prisoner in her own skin. Jakob once tells Dortchen that she must fight for Wilhelm's affections, and fight she does, against the shadowy memory of her abusive father whose presence has power over her even after his death.  

Since Forsyth had little historical evidence to use from the writings of Dortchen herself, it’s fascinating to see how she explores what-could-have-been rather than adhering only to what-did-happen.  Notwithstanding, Forsyth's bibliography is extensive. She researched everything from the Grimms’ early manuscripts to contemporary analyses by fairy tale scholars. She even spoke with a descendant of Dortchen's brother. In light of the already extensive coverage of the Grimm's lives, it is refreshing to see Forsyth's evocative prose seamlessly transition research into fiction. Forsyth takes particular care to highlight the tellers of the tales themselves, elaborating on their middle class origins and dispelling the popular idea that they came from German peasantry. It is surprising that Dortchen’s place in history remains marginal considering that she contributed almost a quarter of the tales in the Grimm's first collection. Fortunately, through Forsyth, Dortchen is finally acknowledged.

Dortchen reminds us that the heroines and heroes of fairy tales are not flawless—they are always in search of something on their journeys. For Dortchen, it is the courage to overcome her fear of reliving abuse by another man (“I am trying to learn how to be brave,” she tells Wilhelm). And most importantly, it is also about reclaiming her freedom, the “wildness” her name alludes to.

The Wild Girl is not entirely a happy novel, nor is it a dark one. It is a beautiful historical romance on its own and a near true-to-life fairy tale told with touching detail of two lovers and their struggle to nourish that love despite the odds of war and trauma. Forsyth explores the silence around Dortchen's life by “listening to the story within the stories that she told,” bringing out the voice that was previously hidden by the stories that this woman treasured. The Wild Girl is a phenomenal retelling that enables us to read the Grimms’ fairy tales anew.
Disclosure: A complimentary copy of the book was sent to the reviewer (originally provided by the publishing company) in exchange for an honest review.

Christie Pang is a graduate student in English with a concentration in Creative Writing at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. She is also the curator for Pins and Needles (https://panfairytales.wordpress.com)a fledgling print and online fairy tale journal that foregrounds transformation in subverting societal norms. 

Monday, July 13, 2015

Virtual Book Tour: "The Wild Girl" + Exclusive Chat 'Behind the Pages' with author Kate Forsyth!

Boy do we have a treat for you today! 

The lovely award-winning, Australian author, Kate Forsyth not only agreed to stop by Once Upon A Blog during her US release virtual book tour but we're allowed to ask her some questions so our fairy tale folk here can get an in depth, 'Behind the Pages' peek at the story and what it took to write it.

In case you aren't yet familiar with the premise The Wild Girl, here's a brief description (alternate description from Goodreads included at end of post):


One of six sisters, Dortchen Wild lives in the small German kingdom of Hesse-Cassel in the early 19th century. She finds herself irresistibly drawn to the boy next door, the handsome but very poor fairy tale scholar Wilhelm Grimm. It is a time of tyranny and terror. Napoleon Bonaparte wants to conquer all of Europe, and Hesse-Cassel is one of the first kingdoms to fall. Forced to live under oppressive French rule, Wilhelm and his brothers quietly rebel by preserving old half-forgotten tales that had once been told by the firesides of houses grand and small over the land. 
As Dortchen tells Wilhelm some of the most powerful and compelling stories in what will one day become his and Jacob's famous fairy tale collection, their love blossoms. But Dortchen's father will not give his consent for them to marry and war, death, and poverty also conspire to keep the lovers apart. Yet Dortchen is determined to find a way. 
Evocative and richly-detailed, Kate Forsyth's The Wild Girl masterfully captures one young woman's enduring faith in love and the power of storytelling.
Now let's welcome Kate and get to the questions! (I have many!!)

Author Kate Forsyth
Fairy Tale News Hound (FTNH): G'day Kate! Welcome to Once Upon A Blog and thank you SO much for dropping by to answer some questions today. I love the story behind the stories, especially of the main story girl - the 'wild' girl, Dortchen - herself. 

When I tell other people about the book I feel I can’t quite communicate how important and significant I feel this book is. To me this is more than just a great story and a great read, though The Wild Girl is that too. It also feels like a strong step forward in understanding, not just in how we came to have the Grimm’s tales in the first place, but in understanding fairy tales and their importance altogether. While I had no problem envisioning the Grimm brothers as younger men, I never really thought about how their own loves and passions affected their tale collecting, writing and, as a result, their scholarship, let alone thought of the lives of the people telling the tales in the first place. After reading this, it makes me very glad the Grimms were so ‘human’ and full of emotions and passions, rather than my previous image of detached business men! Somehow, the tales seem even more important, with them being written down resulting from a combination of passionate scholarship and passionate living. Who could have imagined that the Grimm’s lived next door to the key to their success and Wilhelm’s own (eventual) happily ever after?! Thank you for taking the journey to write this book. There’s no way this story gave itself up easily - Dortchen’s own tale most certainly has "teeth, claws and a bloody lining"! - and yet it feels completely natural on every page.

You’ve blended fact so wonderfully with fiction I have to admit the line gets quite blurred while I’m reading, and I’m too busy reading to stop and go check on things I’m curious to know about! I gather, though, that’s very difficult to do with regard to the real life woman and how her stories were written down, particularly in such a tumultuous time in history.
Dortchen Wild telling Wilhelm Grimm fairy tales by Billerantik

FTNH: What aspects would you say are truly fictional, as opposed to having some clue in the various writings, letters and other documents you’ve unearthed, and what are the aspects you found factual basis to expand on that you felt were important to Dortchen’s story (and why)?

Page from the author notebook for The Wild Girl
photo courtesy of Kate Forsyth
Kate: THE WILD GIRL is, of course, a novel which means it is all fictional!

However, it was inspired by the true story of how the Grimm brothers came to collect their famous fairy tales and I did an enormous amount of research into the time and the place and the social milieu. The Grimm brothers wrote hundreds of letters, diaries, articles and books, and they have been so extensively studied that there is scarcely an event in their lives which has not been recorded. The lives of Dortchen Wild and her sisters, however, have left hardly any trace at all. Even Dortchen's birth date is a matter of conjecture and disagreement. All that is left in Dortchen's own voice are a few childhood letters and a very brief memoir she dictated to her daughter on her death-bed. 

So I began by establishing known facts - when the Grimm brothers first came to Kassel, when Napoleon's Grand Army invaded, when and how the brothers first began to collect old tales, and so on. I gradually built up an intricate timeline of events, including things like the comet of 1812 and the Year Without A Summer in 1816, when famine came to Europe after the fallout from a volcanic eruption in Java. Then I began to think and wonder and imagine what it must have been like to live during such cataclysmic events, and in particular, what it must have been like to have been a woman. 

Page from the author notebook for The Wild Girl
photo courtesy of Kate Forsyth
During this period, I was also establishing as many known facts as I could about the life of Dortchen and her family. I knew very little to begin with - when she had first met Wilhelm, when she began to tell her stories, when they were married, and when she died. I gradually was able to establish other dates, however, particularly in relation to the stories she told Wilhelm, for he kept a rough record of what stories were told when, and by whom. Slowly and with much difficulty, I was able to create a timeline of the tales themselves, finding out who told them and where and when. It had never really been done before. It was like making a quilt from a thousand tiny scraps, all of which came from different places. The work of fairy tale scholars such as Jack Zipes, Valerie Paradiz, Heinz Rolleke, D.L. Ashliman and Cay Dollerup was utterly invaluable to me, each giving me small parts of the jigsaw. I also read primary sources, such as Wilhelm Grimm's own diary, or letters from friends, to help me. 

Once I had a clear timeline of Dortchen's tales, and some idea of where she was when the tales were told (in her sister's summerhouse, for example, or in the family's garden plot on the edge of town), I looked to the tales she had told as a way of getting a glimpse into her inner life. 

Page from the author notebook for The Wild Girl
photo courtesy of Kate Forsyth
Some of Dortchen's tales were very dark - Fitcher's Bird for example, a Bluebeard variant in which the heroine saves herself and her sisters, and All-Kinds-of-Fur, a story of a king who wants to marry his own daughter. I wondered why a young woman, brought up in such a strict patriarchal society, would tell a young man such tales. I wondered when she and Wilhelm first fell in love, and what kept them apart from so long. I wondered why Wilhelm had originally published the stories as they had been told to him, then later changed them so they were not quite as horrifying. I wondered about all these things, and many more, and then did my best to weave a story out of all my wonderings.

Of course, many things which happen in my story are unlikely to be true. For example, it is known that only one soldier returned to Kassel after Napoleon's disastrous march on Moscow, from a conscripted army of 30,000. It is highly unlikely that the one returning soldier was Dortchen's brother ... but it made a much better story to have it be so. 

Another example is the truth of the breakdown of Ferdinand, one of the younger Grimm brothers. It is known there was some kind of emotional upheaval that upset his elder brothers greatly, and it is conjectured to have had something to do with Dortchen. Wilhelm and Jacob wrote very little about it, and so I had to find my own explanation for his wild mood swings, long periods of lassitude, and the way the two elder brothers tried to hush up the whole affair. His symptoms seemed very like drug addiction to me, and I knew that opium addiction was a great social problem of the time ... and that Dortchen's father was an apothecary who would have made laudanum as a matter of course ... and so I came up with my own solution to the mystery...
Display from Grimm Brothers Museum for the 200th Anniversary of the 1st edition of Household Tales

FTNH: Are there other clues and facts from your research you couldn’t find a way to include but wish you had?

Kate: No, not at all. I always knew I was telling Dortchen's story and that I had to concentrate on those facts which would help me do that.


FTNH: I read that when you were researching Bitter Greens you came across Clever Maids: The Secret History of the Grimm Fairy Tales by Valerie Paradiz, which inspired you to look deeper into Dortchen’s story. When you found out the author hadn’t kept her notes, how did you then go about your research, without being able to retrace her footsteps as planned? How did you find out more when you only had a letter and some footnotes (essentially) to go on?


Kate: Yes, I first read about Dortchen Wild in Clever Maids: The Secret History of the Grimm Fairy Tales. Dr. Paradiz had examined most of the female tellers of the Grimm brothers' famous tales - Dortchen Wild was only one of them and the fact that she ended up marrying Wilhelm was added almost as an afterthought in the final chapter. I was immediately electrified by her story, and knew I wanted to write a novel based on her life. I was then in the midst of writing another fairy-tale-inspired novel, BITTER GREENS, which was the major creative component of my doctorate. So it was a while before I could settle down to do my research for THE WILD GIRL. I wrote to Dr. Paradiz and  was very disappointed to learn that she had not kept any of her research after moving house (very understandable too! I have boxes and boxes and boxes of my research notes). Luckily I really love to research. I went about it slowly and doggedly, acquiring books and academic articles, reading everything I could lay my hands on (I even tried to teach myself German so I could read the original oral tales, which had not at that time been translated into English). Jack Zipes has recently brought out a wonderful edition of all the original stories and I can't help thinking how useful that would have been to me, if only he'd brought it out a little sooner!
It was not just the lives of the Grimm brothers I was researching, but also life during the Napoleonic wars and the everyday lives of women at that time. It was a big job! I was very lucky in that I had help. For example, I found a German researcher who was able to go and look at all the original parish records and work out for me the exact dates of the births, deaths and marriages of the Wild family for the first time. And I found a descendant of the Wild family who was able to give me some snippets of family lore, plus translated one of Wilhelm's diaries into English for me (also for the first time). Then many fairy tale scholars were interested in my project and helped me by sending me their research, or by patiently answering my questions.


FTNH: Were there any sorts of clues in the stories Dortchen told the Grimms to get you started or direct your digging?

Page from the author notebook for The Wild Girl
photo courtesy of Kate Forsyth
Kate: Absolutely! I used her stories as a sort of template to help me create a narrative structure. Dortchen told Wilhelm such well-known tales as Hansel & Gretel, Rumpelstiltskin, The Elves and the Shoemaker, Six Swans, The Frog King ... and lesser known tales such as Sweetheart Roland, The Singing, Springing Lark (a beautiful variant on the Beauty & the Beast tale with a much more interesting and active heroine), Fitcher's Bird, The Singing Bone, and All-Kinds-of-Fur. I chose seven of her tales as the framework for my novel, and I looked to the inner meaning and motifs of the tale to give me some kind of glimpse into her inner world. Probably the most devastating of these tales, in what it might imply for Dortchen's life, is that of All-Kinds-of-Fur. It was the last tale Dortchen told Wilhelm before the first collection of tales was sent to the printers (she told it on October 9th, 1812 and the book was released in December of the same year). He wrote it down and sent it in haste, and so it is very close to the oral version he heard from her. It’s a story of a girl whose father wants to marry her, and who will not be thwarted in his desire. She asks for all kinds of impossible tasks to be undertaken to try and delay him, including a coat made from the skin of every living creature in the kingdom. Her father does not hesitate to kill and flay all the creatures and presents the coat of all-kinds-of-fur to her. She uses it to disguise herself and escape, only to be caught by another king who abuses and mistreats her ... then marries her in the end. There's a lot of violence as well as implied incest in the original version of All-Kinds-of-Fur.  When Wilhelm was preparing for the second edition of the tales, he rewrote the story to make it quite clear that the king who marries her at the end of the story is not the king, her father - something which was not at all clear in the original oral story, which had a terrible breathlessness and intensity to it.
"The Brothers Grimm at the Fairy Tale Ladys" oil on Canvas, by Louis Katzenstein
[Dorothea Viehmann telling tales to the Grimm brothers, with her charges (possibly the Wild family) present]
FTNH: I have to admit I thought Bitter Greens was amazing (and congratulations on your ALA award!) but The Wild Girl is, hands down, my favorite book you’ve written to date - for so many reasons. My most urgent - and possibly most selfish - question is: is there any chance at all you’ll release an annotated version?  I feel like there are so many little pieces of information the story didn’t have the room to give us (because it was Dortchen’s personal story after all) and there are so many side-notes you make reference to in your author’s notes and interviews, that I’d love to be able to touch on those in context as I re-read, so… please? (With cornflowers on top?*)
*If you don't know what this is in reference to, you'll have to read the book and find out... ;)

Kate: What a lovely idea! I'd love to do it one day. I need someone to do their doctorate on it! Or for it to be such an astounding international bestseller that people are hungry to know more and demand someone published such a thing.  We could do it with all the beautiful Grimm illustrations ... and Dortchen's recipes (some of the meals in the book actually come from Dortchen's own recipe book, she was meant to be an amazing cook!) ... and with photographs** of my handwritten notebooks...
**WE HAVE A PREVIEW OF SOME OF THESE PHOTOS IN THIS POST!!! (Thank you Kate!!)

FTNH: I love the way the tales are constant touchstones throughout the book. There are quotes from tales in different sections, you allude to others in the titles of chapters, such as “Weaving Nettles”, “Girl in Ashes”, and “The Skin of Wild Beasts”. How and when in your writing process did you go about choosing which went where?

Page from the author notebook for The Wild Girl
photo courtesy of Kate Forsyth
Kate: It was an ongoing process! As I said earlier, one of the first things I did was work out (very slowly and with a great deal of difficulty) when Dortchen had told her tales and laid them out in chronological order. Then I compared that timeline to my greater historical timeline, and what I knew about the Grimm and Wild families. I examined each story for its motifs and meanings, and then thought about how I could use it within the novel. Hansel and Gretel, the tale of unloved and abandoned children ... Six Swans, a story about a girl who must remain mute ... Fitcher's Bird, about a girl who tries to save her sisters ... The Singing Bone, a story about rivalry between brothers .... Sweetheart Roland, a tale in which a man forgets his true love and almost marries another ... Once I began, it was surprisingly easy.


FTNH: You mention in your notes that there’s a veiled reference to Dortchen as a ‘wild deer’ in the final version of “All-Kinds-Of-Fur”. Could you explain how you discovered this and how Dortchen is this “wild” girl?

Lowenburg Castle (Lion's Castle), Kassel, Germany
Brothers Grimm statue, Kassel, Germany

Kate: Yes, that was a wonderful discovery. So romantic! It was not my discovery as such. One of my key texts was an essay on All-Kinds-of-Fur  by the Danish fairy tale scholar Cay Dollerup, in which he tells the anecdote of how Dortchen told Wilhelm the tale and he rushed it off to the printers so it could be included in the first collection. Dr. Dollerup then examines the editorial changes made by Wilhelm in the second edition, which tone down the violence a great deal and make clear the two kings are not the same man. He notes that - in the scene when the second king finds (and rescues) the poor hunted princess in her coat of all-kinds-of-fur - Wilhelm capitalised the W in the phrase “seht doch, was dort für ein Wild sich versteckt hat” which roughly translates to mean, 'what Wild creature is hiding here?' (Sometimes translated as Wild thing or Wild deer). By capitalising the W in wild, Wilhelm was, I believe, making a clear reference to the woman who would later become his wife. It also links Dortchen very strongly to the character of the hunted princess of the tale.  As a novelist, I am always interested in why things happen, why people do what they do. It's the psychological motivations of people that interest me. So, of course,  once I realised that Wilhelm had rewritten All-Kinds-of-Fur so extensively and with such clear intent to remove the ugly incestuous relationship in it - and that he had capitalised the W in the word wild - well, I wanted to know why.  I am very interested in the therapeutic use of fairy tales and this particular tale is often used to help victims of father-daughter incest. The idea is that the first oral tale is incest fulfilled, the second edited tale is incest averted. By making the changes that he did, Wilhelm changed the whole meaning of the tale. One of the redemptive powers of storytelling is the ability it gives us to control our destiny. We choose the tale that we tell about ourselves. By changing the story to that of a girl who escapes the shadow of her father and finds love elsewhere, Wilhelm was - I believe - giving Dortchen a kind of gift, a chance to rewrite her own story with a happy ending. That seemed unbelievably beautiful and powerful and romantic to me, and so it became a central part of the novel.
Page from the author notebook for The Wild Girl - photo courtesy of Kate Forsyth
FTNH: There are many references through The Wild Girl to the tales Sweetheart Roland and All-Kinds-Of-Fur, in particular. How did you decide these stories were so important to Dortchen’s personal story? 

Close-up of Dortchen Wild telling
Wilhelm Grimm fairy tales by Billerantik
Kate: While I was planning and researching THE WILD GIRL, I was very struck by the uncanny similarities between her life and that of the heroines of the stories she told. That is one reason why I chose to use her tales as intertexts. Sweetheart Roland, for example, is a story about a young woman who escapes a witch by turning her own magic against her, only to have her sweetheart forget her. The girl discovers her sweetheart is to marry another, and goes to the wedding where she sings so sweetly the unfaithful bridegroom remembers her and returns to her. This seemed to reflect what had happened in Dortchen and Wilhelm's relationship, in which he had for a period of time seemed likely to marry another.


FTNH: Of all the other tales that Dortchen told Wilhelm, which do you feel also had particular personal meaning to her?

Portrait of Wilhelm by brother & artist
Ludwig Emil Grimm
who illustrated an early version of
Household Tales (1819)
Kate: One of my all-time favourite fairy tales is Six Swans, and I was so pleased when I learned it had been one of Dortchen's tales. It is a story about a young woman who must be mute for six years, while she weaves shirts from nettles for her brothers, who have all been transformed into swans. The level of silent suffering of the heroine is extraordinary - it is a story of such sacrifice and redemption - and I felt it resonated strongly with Dortchen's story. She was forbidden to see the man she loved, she was expected to sacrifice herself to nurse her sick parents and then the children of her dead sister, she was silenced by the autocratic will of her father and indeed by the strict patriarchal society in which she lived, she had to labour in the garden and the house and the apothecary (slashing nettles, sewing clothes, mixing potions), she keeps mute about her own needs and desires to such an extent that she has been long forgotten...
FTNH: Finally - I have no doubt this book must have been personally difficult to write and experience on many levels, as well as to have a different perspective on tales, even those you already knew well. How has researching and writing this book changed your perspective on fairy tale storytelling, writing (down) and rewriting?

Graves of the Brothers Grimm
in the St Matthaus Kirchhof Cemetery
in Schöneberg, Berlin -photo by Thorleif Wiik
Kate: The Wild Girl was the most difficult book I have ever written, for a multitude of reasons. First, the research was so time-consuming and painstaking, and I had to be very patient and dogged in my approach which is not perhaps natural to me (I'm not known for my patience!). Secondly, I lived within Dortchen's skin for a very long time and so I suffered everything she suffered. As I began to discover things that seemed more and more likely to have happened to her, I felt a growing sense of dread. I wanted to try and save her, but then I had to be true to the story that was revealing itself to me. I had a crisis of faith. Did I have the right to imagine someone else's life? What if I was wrong? In the end, I had to choose - I had to tell the story that seemed true to me. But it was an agonising decision, because these were real people I was writing about and I did not know the real facts ... nobody did. I clung to Virginia Woolf's saying that fiction can be more true than fact, and just did the very best I could do, telling the emotional truth as I saw it. 

Kassel, Grimms statue in Winter
Many of the dreams I describe in the book are the nightmares I myself had to endure and so the book was a form of exorcism for me as well. 

And technically it was a difficult book to write. The action covers twenty years of one woman's life, and she was a simple apothecary's daughter, not very well-educated, that lived through a time of war and famine and crushing poverty. Her love affair is dragged out over more than a decade (a long time to sustain sexual tension!) and so I had to find other ways to create a book full of suspense. I felt it very important to be true to the known facts of her life, but, oh, how I wished she and Wilhelm had married ten years earlier! The book took me a lot longer to write than I had expected, and so I had my publishers waiting for it which added to my burden. 

Nonetheless, I loved it all. It was such an extraordinary journey of discovery for me, and I loved learning so much about more about the history and meaning of the fairy tales I had always loved. I'm very glad that so many people have come to love my Wild Girl as much as I do!
Page from the author notebook for The Wild Girl - photo courtesy of Kate Forsyth
Thank you again for this wonderful - and super in-depth! - interview today Kate! 

We know we used up our entire question quota and greatly appreciate you taking the time to talk to us and letting us peek behind the pages.

We wish you every success in making Dortchen a household name, and in having your own tales continue to become known “throughout many lands”.

And that concludes our very special interview for today.
(I have my fingers crossed for the annotated version so we can bring her back to talk even more...)
As a wonderful bonus, Kate has generously sent some photos from the pages of her notebooks for THE WILD GIRL that I have scattered throughout the interview text! (We are so lucky!) If you haven't already, click on them to see the pages full size and check out her research notes - seriously awesome stuff.

Extra awesome bonus:
TOMORROW, we are launching a GIVEAWAY for your very own copy of
THE WILD GIRL!
(US only due to International shipping, very sorry non-US folks! We hope we have something to offer you soon.)
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"Dortchen Wild fell in love with Wilhelm Grimm the first time she saw him.

Growing up in the small German kingdom of Hessen-Cassel in early Nineteenth century, Dortchen Wild is irresistibly drawn to the boy next door, the young and handsome fairy tale scholar Wilhelm Grimm. 

It is a time of War, tyranny and terror. Napoleon Bonaparte wants to conquer all of Europe, and Hessen-Cassel is one of the first kingdoms to fall. Forced to live under oppressive French rule, the Grimm brothers decide to save old tales that had once been told by the firesides of houses grand and small all over the land.

Dortchen knows many beautiful old stories, such as 'Hansel and Gretel', 'The Frog King' and 'Six Swans'. As she tells them to Wilhelm, their love blossoms. Yet the Grimm family is desperately poor, and Dortchen's father has other plans for his daughter. Marriage is an impossible dream.

Dortchen can only hope that happy endings are not just the stuff of fairy tales."
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We'll also be posting our Once Upon A Blog official reviewer, Christie Pang's review of The Wild Girl so you can get a different perspective from my personal one on the book, along with all the details on how to enter our giveaway. 
Tune in tomorrow!