Brothers and Beasts: An Anthology of Men on Fairy Tales (Series in Fairy-Tale Studies) (Series in Fairy-Tale Studies) (Series in Fairy-Tale Studies) [Paperback]

Maria Tatar (Author), Kate Bernheimer (Editor)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0814332676 | ISBN-13: 978-0814332672 | Publication Date: October 10, 2007

Despite the availability of several eloquent gender studies of fairy tales, a popular reference on men and fairy tales has so far been nonexistent. Brothers and Beasts offers a new perspective by allowing twenty-three male writers the chance to explore their artistic and emotional relationship to their favorite fairy-tale stories. In their personal essays, the contributors who include genre, literary, mainstream, and visual media writers offer new insight into men s reception of fairy tales. Brothers and Beasts, the follow-up to Kate Bernheimer's influential Mirror, Mirror on the Wall: Women Writers Explore Their Favorite Fairy Tales, offers new avenues for research in fairy-tale studies.
Contributors: Steve Almond, Brian Baldi, Christopher Barzak, Joshua Beckman, Greg Bills, Jirí Cêch, Alexander Chee, Robert Coover, Neil Gaiman, Johannes Göransson, Ilya Kaminsky, Eric Kraft, Norman Lock, Gregory Maguire, Michael Martone, Michael Mejia, Timothy Schaffert, David J. Schwartz, Vijay Seshadri, Richard Siken, Kieran Suckling, Maria Tatar, Jeff VanderMeer, Willy Vlautin, Jack Zipes

Editorial Reviews

Review

Brothers and Beasts is a creative delight, forcing some wonderful male writers and scholars to articulate their own relationship to fairy tales. It is insightful and intensely autobiographical. --Jeannine Blackwell, dean of the Graduate School at the University of Kentucky and co-author of The Queen s Mirror: Fairy Tales by German Women Writers, 1780 1900

I read this enchanting collection cover-to-cover in two days. It s appealing and fresh, thoughtful and often funny; the writers reveal themselves in stunning array, naked but never tawdry. Brothers and Beasts is for anyone who likes a good tale and treasures the act of imagining. --Lydia Millet, author of Oh Pure and Radiant Heart and My Happy Life

For thousands of years, storytellers have drawn upon fairy tales to create fictions relevant to their own times, making use of their symbolic language to explore issues of gender, class, justice, power, and cultural identity. In Brothers and Beasts, twenty-four male writers make it clear why fairy tales are still important to a wide range of storytellers today. The essays here are both whimsical and scholarly; both archly provocative and deeply moving. This superb companion to Mirror, Mirror demonstrates the ways that the stories read in childhood continue to shape us as adults and why many writers return to them long after childhood is done. --Terri Windling, author of The Wood Wife and other books

About the Author

Kate Bernheimer is an editor, novelist, children s book author, and assistant professor of English for the MFA Program at the University of Alabama. She also edits Fairy Tale Review, a journal that she founded.

Product Details

• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: Wayne State University Press (October 10, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0814332676
• ISBN-13: 978-0814332672
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.3 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #451,467 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Kate Bernheimer is the author of a short story collection (Horse, Flower, Bird, Coffee House Press, 2010) and a trio of novels (The Complete Tales of Ketzia Gold, 2001; The Complete Tales of Merry Gold, 2006; and The Complete Tales of Lucy Gold, 2011). She has edited three fairy-tale anthologies including the World Fantasy Award winning My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me: Forty New Fairy Tales (Penguin Non-Classics, 2010), which she edited (with assistance from Carmen Gimenez Smith). She also writes children's books, including The Girl in The Castle inside The Museum (Random House Children's Books/Schwartz & Wade), which was illustrated by Nicoletta Ceccoli and was named a Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2008. The Lonely Book, her second children's book, illustrated by Chris Sheban, is forthcoming from Random House Children's Books/Schwartz & Wade on February 14, 2012. A third is currently being illustrated. Kate Bernheimer founded and edits the literary journal Fairy Tale Review. She is Associate Professor & Writer in Residence at the University of Louisiana in Lafayette.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great anthology, May 29, 2008

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RMB - See all my reviews

This review is from: Brothers and Beasts: An Anthology of Men on Fairy Tales (Series in Fairy-Tale Studies) (Series in Fairy-Tale Studies) (Series in Fairy-Tale Studies) (Paperback)

This collection on men and how fairy tales impacted their work is excellent. Literate, well written, and beautifully edited. A must for lovers of the genre.