Event in Oxford on 11/27/14: Marina Warner--Voices in the Dark: Fairy tales in our time

The readership for SurLaLune is truly international--I don't know of a country that hasn't accessed the SurLaLune site according to the analytics. Next week on November 27th (Thanksgiving Day in the US), there is a special event with Marina Warner in Oxford that some readers here may be able to attend. So I am sharing. When I do share events like this, I always get thank yous for doing so from people who attend and wouldn't have without reading about it here, so here goes. The event, of course, will also help promote Warner's new book, Once Upon a Time: A Short History of Fairy Tale

Marina Warner--Voices in the Dark: Fairy tales in our time

About the event:

From beautiful princesses, giants, and goblins to, glass slippers, poisoned apples, and mirrors, the characters and images of fairy tales have bewitched readers and audiences, young and old, for centuries. Few forms of literature have greater power to enchant and inspire than a fairy tale.

But what is a fairy tale? Where do they come from and what do they mean? What do they tell us about morality, sexuality, and society? Fairy tales stretch across long distances and times; they mingle with folklore and myth, and have inspired ideas about nature and the supernatural, imagination and fantasy, psychoanalysis, and feminism.

Marina Warner explores fairy tales through the ages, and their appearance on page, stage and screen. From the Grimm’s Cinderella to modern films such as Pan’s Labyrinth, Warner investigates the best of the genre, and demonstrates how fairy tales affect human understanding and culture.

About Marina Warner

Marina Warner’s award-winning studies of mythology and fairy tales include Alone of All Her Sex: The Myth and the Cult of the Virgin Mary (1976; re-issued 2013), Stranger Magic: Charmed States & the Arabian Nights (2012), From the Beast to the Blonde – on Fairy Tales and their Tellers (1994), Monuments & Maidens: The Allegory of the Female Form (1985), and No Go the Bogeyman: Scaring, Lulling and Making Mock (1998). Her Clarendon Lectures Fantastic Metamorphoses; Other Worlds were published in 2001; her essays on literature and culture were collected in Signs & Wonders (2000), and Phantasmagoria, a study of spirits and technology, appeared in 2006. In 2013 she was awarded a Sheykh Zayed Prize and the Truman Capote Award. She was awarded a CBE for services to Literature in 2008. She is a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, an Honorary Fellow of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and the British Academy.

Place:

The Story Museum
Rochester House
42 Pembroke Street
Oxford OX1 1BP
+44 (0)1865 790050

Time:
18.00

A 30-minute talk with 20-minute Q & A session.

Tickets:
£7.50 / £5

Booking:
Tickets can be booked at our Tickets Oxford page, or by phoning the ticket hotline at 01865 305305.

On the day of the event, tickets will only be available at The Story Museum. Our office number is 01865 790050 – but please be aware that the office is not regularly manned at weekends.

Celebrating the Mythic Life Conference

Oh noes! This one got left in draft mode from last week, better late than never. And thanks to Joan for the heads up! This one is for Joseph Campbell fans.

Celebrating the Mythic Life – October 5th to the 8th, 2012

A Three-Day conference experiencing and cultivating Myth, Creativity, Introspection & the art of Following your Bliss to be held Friday October 5rd through Monday 8th 2012 at the Center for Symbolic Studies in the heart of the Hudson Valley: New Paltz, New York.

The intention is to pay homage to the continuing legacy of Joseph Campbell; most notably a look back at the last 25 years of vibrant work and a forward peek into what the next 25 years may have to offer in the studies of of myth, archetype, symbol, story & various arts.

GrimmFest at University of Florida

  

GrimmFest is a program at the University of Florida to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the Grimms publication. The event series is spread out over the semester, not one weekend as you can see from the existing dates below. That makes it harder for those of us not in Florida.

From the University of Florida's Department of English page:

10/30/12

Jerry Griswold presents “Beauties & Beasts @ Halloween” as the first installment of GrimmFest, an event series celebrating the 200th Anniversary of the Brothers Grimm, co-sponsored by the Center for Children’s Literature and Culture and the Baldwin Library for Historical Children’s Literature. Stories and observations about: How fairy tales became gothic. Why scariness is fun. And how our monsters are not what they used to be. Jerry Griswold is a specialist in Children’s Literature and in American Literature and Culture. The author of seven books, he has published more than 200 essays in the national press (Nation, Paris Review, New Republic, et al.) and is a frequent contributor to the New York and the Los Angeles Times. The former Director of the National Center for the Study of Children’s Literature, Griswold was a professor at San Diego State University, UCLA, UCSD, and the National University of Ireland in Galway. 7 PM. Smathers Library East, Room 1A.

11/13/12

Maria Tatar presents “Mythical and Magical: 200 Years of the Brothers Grimm” as the second installment of GrimmFest, an event series celebrating the 200th Anniversary of the Brothers Grimm, co-sponsored by the Center for Children’s Literature and Culture and the Baldwin Library for Historical Children's Literature. Prof. Tatar will trace the evolution of fairy tales from the fireside to Kindle and reflect on the resurgence of fairy tales in new media today—Hollywood productions in particular. “Hansel and Gretel,” “Briar Rose,” and “Beauty and the Beast” will be used as examples to demonstrate the “enduring appeal” of fairy tales and how they depend on paradox and contradiction for their cultural power. Maria Tatar is the John L. Loeb Professor of Germanic Languages & Literatures and Folklore & Mythology at Harvard University. She is the author of the new bicentennial edition of The Annotated Brothers Grimm and edited The Fairies Return, both published in 2012. She has published many other books, including volumes on J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan, on childhood reading (Enchanted Hunters), and on Weimar Germany (Lustmord). 7 PM. Smathers Library East, Room 1A.

Unless otherwise noted, all events are open to the public and free of charge.

Event: GRIMM TALES: TELLING STORIES with Neil Gaiman and Philip Pullman

 

From Neil Gaiman's blog:

I'll be in Conversation with Philip Pullman, talking about fairy tales and writing, on October the 29th at London's Cambridge Theatre. Details are at See Tickets and tickets are going ridiculously fast, which is why I thought I'd better nip on and mention it now.

And from See Tickets:

Please note: this event is suitable for children aged 12 and over.

GRIMM TALES: TELLING STORIES
Philip Pullman in conversation with Neil Gaiman

'Swiftness is a great virtue in the fairy tale.
All we need is the word "Once." and we're off'

5x15 and Penguin Books invite you to discover the dark fascination of fairy tales at a unique evening with two of the world's greatest storytellers.

To celebrate the publication of Grimm Tales for Young and Old, Philip Pullman's enchanting new retelling of the Grimm Brothers' stories of wicked deeds and otherworldly romance, this one-off event will bring together the award-winning authors, Philip Pullman and Neil Gaiman. This is an unmissable opportunity to hear two of the most distinctive voices in modern fiction discuss their own work and the enduring appeal of fairy tales, along with a reading from the book by Philip Pullman.

The event will take place in the magical surroundings of the Cambridge Theatre, home to the West End production of Matilda - a fitting setting for an evening dedicated to the power of books and stories - making it a perfect Halloween night out for older children and adults alike.

There will be a limited signing after the event, for books purchased on the night.

SDSU: Fairy Tale Author-in-Residence Kate Bernheimer

From the SDSU Literature Department News:

Kate Bernheimer will be our first Fairy-Tale Author-in-Residence at San Diego State University (SDSU), on Nov. 14-15.

Kate Bernheimer has published novels, stories, children’s books, and essays on fairy tales, and has edited three influential fairy-tale anthologies. Her most recent book is Horse, Flower, Bird, “a collection readers won’t soon forget, one that redefines the fairy tale into something wholly original” (Booklist). She is the author novels trilogy about three sisters—The Complete Tales of Ketzia Gold, The Complete Tales of Merry Gold, and The Complete Tales of Lucy Gold—about which Katrhyn Davis wrote"it is Kate Bernheimer's formidable act of sorcery to take the fairy tale--that most ancient of forms--and turn it into something so brand-new under the sun" (FC2). Her children's book, The Girl in The Castle inside The Museum (Random House/Schwartz & Wade Books), was named one of the Best Books of 2008 by Publishers Weekly. Forthcoming children’s books include The Lonely Book, and The Girl Who Wouldn’t Brush Her Hair (both Random House/Schwartz & Wade Books). She has published work in many distinguished literary journals, including Tin House, Western Humanities Review, Poetry International, and The Massachusetts Review. Her influential anthologies include My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me: Forty New Fairy Tales (Penguin), Mirror, Mirror on The Wall: Women Writers Explore Their Favorite Fairy Tales (Anchor/Vintage), and Brothers and Beasts: An Anthology of Men on Fairy Tales (Wayne State University Press). In 2005, she founded, and currently remains editor of, Fairy Tale Review, the leading literary journal dedicated to fairy tales as a contemporary art form.

More information is available at: http://www.katebernheimer.com/
Monday, Nov. 14
2pm-3.15pm Creative Writing Workshop, Student Services West 2512

7pm: Fiction Reading at the Love Library, room LL430

Tuesday, Nov. 15
3.30pm-4.30pm: Talk on Fairytales at the Love Library, room LL 430

Kate's visit is co-sponsored by Children's Literature Center, Poetry International, Poetry Translation Club, CASE, SDSU Library, Associated Students, Poets & Writers Magazine and the English Department at SDSU.

Event in NYC: Readings from My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me

Symphony Space in NYC is having a special event Wed. Oct. 27^th at 7pm.:

Gregory Maguire, the author of Wicked, introduces stories by contemporary writers from the new collection, My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me, edited by Kate Bernheimer. Lili Taylor (Six Feet Under), Christine Ebersole (Grey Gardens) and Sonia Manzano (Sesame Street) perform stories by Joyce Carol Oates, Kim Addonizio, Ilya Kaminsky, and Jonathon Keats. These varied modern spins on classic fairy tales are set in a loft in Manhattan, a futuristic alternate universe, and enchanted, haunting worlds out of time.

You can read a little more about it here.