Mother-in-Law of Oz
The Wizard of Oz is deeply ingrained into our culture. While many people can practically recite the 1939 movie, the original source material isn’t as well known. The Wonderful Wizard…
The Great Women Artists Podcast: Marina Warner on Eve, Lilith, Athena, Medusa
A writer, lecturer, author of almost 40 books, and former president of the Royal Society of Literature, Marina Warner, according to the New Yorker, is an authority on things that…
The Golden Arm
The Golden Arm is a folktale, a story appearing in multiple cultures through oral tradition and folklore, most famously told by Mark Twain and also used by him to instruct…
How to Stay Married to Baba Yaga
"A yolk is not just a yolk: at the bottom of all that gold is a secret only the witches see. You aren’t a witch. Choke down the battered yolks…
True Crime Fairy Tale
Was the tale of Hansel and Gretel inspired by a real crime in German history? It would make for a great story, if it were true. This week’s episode comes…
The Cat Who Walked a Thousand Miles
At a time now past, a cat was born. This was not so long after the first cats came to Japan, so they were rare and mostly lived near the…
The Candy Children’s Mother by A.A. Balaskovits
My grandmother once told me that once you go into the forest, you come back a changeling. Or you don’t come back at all.
A Meditation on Forests, Life, and Art: Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Fir Tree”
“The Fir Tree” was originally published in New Fairy Tales, Second Collection (1844) next to another winter tale, The Snow Queen. It was swiftly overshadowed by that other story and…