Fairy Tale Salon Night: Radical Retellings

BOLD is thrilled to host Fairy Tale Salon Night: Radical Retellings.

Fairy tale writer Kathlene Postma and her band of tale-spinning students from Pacific University take on traditional European fairy tales.
This modern fairy tale salon group will share some surprises hidden in ancient tales and read from their own radical retellings.

Their for-adults stories challenge what we’ve been told about the characters in old favorites like “Little Red Riding Hood,” “Cinderella,” “Snow White,” “The Little Mermaid,” “Beauty in the Beast,” and “Sleeping Beauty.”

What happens if the wolf is hunted by Little Red? Is the stepmother in Snow White truly up to no good? What if Ariel is a stalker? What if Beauty is a boy?

These creative retellings pose questions about gender, humans, animals, love, hate and, of course, magic.

Kathlene “Kat” Postma is a professor at Pacific University where she teaches creative writing and literature, including fairy tale studies, mythology, and folklore. Her work has appeared in The Kenyon Review, Los Angeles Review, Hawai’i Review, ZYZZYVA, Willow Springs, Blood Orange Review, Green Mountains Review, and numerous other magazines. She has written a collection of fairy tales for adults entitled The Keys to Her Own Kingdom and is crafting a historical novel that runs wild with the fairy tales of seventeenth-century France. Kathlene is editor of New Ground Books, an imprint of Pacific University Press.

Interested in more radical retellings?

Books that rebel: The Merry Spinster by Mallory Ortberg. What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours by Helen Oyeyemi, Kissing the Witch by Emma Donoghu, The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey, The Witch’s Kiss by Emma Donaghu, The True Story of Hansel and Gretel by Louise Murphy.

Arrive at 6:30 p.m. to grab a snack or drink. The event will start at 7:00 p.m.

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Event cohosted by BOLD Coffee & Books and Indigo: Editing, Design, and More.