My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me: Forty New Fairy Tales - Paperback

by Kate Bernheimer (Editor), Kate Bernheimer (Introduction by), Gregory Maguire (Foreword by)

The fairy tale lives again in this book of forty new stories by some of the biggest names in contemporary fiction, science fiction, fantasy, and magical realism.

Neil Gaiman, "Orange"

Aimee Bender, "The Color Master"

Joyce Carol Oates, "Blue-bearded Lover"

Michael Cunningham, "The Wild Swans"

These and more than thirty other stories by Francine Prose, Kelly Link, Jim Shepard, Lydia Millet, and many other extraordinary writers make up this thrilling celebration of fairy tales--the ultimate literary costume party.

Spinning houses and talking birds. Whispered secrets and borrowed hope. Here are new stories sewn from old skins, gathered by visionary editor Kate Bernheimer and inspired by everything from Hans Christian Andersen's "The Snow Queen" and "The Little Match Girl" to Charles Perrault's "Bluebeard" and "Cinderella" to the Brothers Grimm's "Hansel and Gretel" and "Rumpelstiltskin" to fairy tales by Goethe and Calvino and from China, Japan, Vietnam, Russia, Norway, and Mexico.

Fairy tales are our oldest literary tradition, and yet they chart the imaginative frontiers of the twenty-first century as powerfully as they evoke our earliest encounters with literature. This exhilarating collection restores their place in the literary canon.

Author Biography

Kate Bernheimer is the editor of xo Orpheus: Fifty New Myths, among several other anthologies, and the founder and editor of the literary journal Fairy Tale Review. The author of numerous works of fiction, including How a Mother Weaned Her Girl from Fairy Tales, she teaches in the English department at the University of Arizona.

Gregory Maguire (foreword) is the bestselling author of Wicked, the basis for the Tony Award-winning Broadway musical of the same name. He lives in Boston, Massachusetts.