KATE BERNHEIMER / My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me: Forty New Fairy Tales
“Let’s open the door to the greenroom and peek to see who is
waiting. A bevy of beauties . . . an evanescence of sprites . . . an
abundance of adversaries . . . a passel of princes . . . Maybe we
should have brought that bubbly; but there’s something being
served here more deeply inebriating than champagne. Hush.”
-- Gregory Maguire, from the Foreword
Childhood memories of princesses and ogres dominate our
perception of fairy tales. Yet for many modern writers, the fairy tale is a
living art form as relevant today as the tales of the Brothers Grimm were
hundreds of years ago. My Mother She Killed Me, My Father
He Ate Me, edited by Kate Bernheimer, is a celebration of this unique
story form, with contributions from forty extraordinary writers. Inspired by
everything from Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Little Match Girl” to fairy
tales by Goethe and representing countries from
As the recent success of the film
The writers and stories in this unique collection represent amazing diversity. Neil Gaiman and Francesca Lia Block offer an entirely new take on Greek mythology. Naoko Awa and Hiromi Ito magically resurrect Japanese folktales. Bluebeard and his infamous castle are revived by Joyce Carol Oates and John Updike. Stacey Richter and Michael Martone reimagine lasting favorites such as “Cinderella” and “Jack and the Beanstalk.” My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me challenges us to preserve fairy tales for future generations. These, after all, are the stories that find a way to speak to everyone.
Late-breaking news: joining us will be special guest JONATHON KEATS, whose story in this anthology will be featured at Symphony Space’s Selected Shorts in a program hosted Gregory Maguire, also this evening. Hear it here!
Kate Bernheimer is the founder and editor of the literary
journal, Fairy Tale Review and the
editor of two previous anthologies,
Mirror, Mirror on the Wall: Women Writers Explore Their Favorite Fairy Tales
and Brothers and Beasts: An Anthology of
Men on Fairy Tales. She is also the author of several books, including two
novels and a children’s book. She has published stories in such journals as Tin House, Western Humanities Review,
and The Massachusetts Review. Her new
story collection, Horse, Flower, Bird,
is also just published; Kate will talk about this book, too, this evening.
Bernheimer lives in
Joining Kate this evening is contributor Lucy Corin, the author of the short story collection The Entire
Predicament and the novel Everyday Psychokillers: A History
for Girls. She teaches at UC Davis, and is working on a book of a
hundred very small apocalypses and a novel about the brain.
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