Fairy Tales
Story Stream
The Billionaire, the Influencer and their Baby March 14, 2025
On Valentine’s Day, a conservative influencer named Ashley St. Clair announced, via a carefully choreographed (and publicist-approved) tweet, that she had a child with Elon Musk....
The Case for Not Sanitizing Fairy Tales June 21, 2024
During Flannery O’Connor’s childhood, the future author had a creative way of weeding out any unsatisfactory playmates who had been chosen by her mother as respectable society. O’Connor would read Grimms’ Fairy Tales aloud to her guests. Some were to...
Running Away with the Fairies January 05, 2024
Here in Avalon was never supposed to be about fairies. I’d envisioned the novel—a literary thriller about two sisters, one of whom, Cecilia, goes missing after getting involved with a mysterious interactive theatre troupe—as a straightforwardly Gothi...
Cooking with Madame d’Aulnoy October 06, 2023
The fairy tales of Mary-Catherine le Jumel de Barneville, Baronesse d’Aulnoy—first published in French in the 1690s—are full of jewel-like foods, poisoned drinks, and violent feats of baking. The cooking is extreme. In one story, “Finette-Cendron,” a...
How to Make a Nation October 02, 2023
Most orderly nation states teach their citizens something about the history of their people and place. It might be presented as something of a fairy tale, with some of the nation’s unpleasant truths hidden from view; others convey their history as a ...
