Hi, everyone.
I'm very pleased and honored to introduce Kate Bernheimer--
writer, editor, teacher, and muse of the contemporary fairy
tale.
I'm sure many of you were at this reading, that Aurelie just
mentioned the other night, celebrating "My Mother She
Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me," which
is important anthology of contemporary fairy tales edited
by Kate just published by Penguin.
And we sold out really fast this past Wednesday, which was sad.
But we have many more copies tonight, which is happy.
So please pick one up.
This past Wednesday night--
so it's been the week of Kate, which is lovely.
Wednesday night, though, was for contemplating and celebrating
Kate in her fiery bright aspect as an editor, energizer,
protector, and generous measurer of fairy tales.
Tonight is for contemplating and celebrating
Kate in her moonbeam, cave-shine aspect as a writer, tale
teller, spell maker, author.
Kate's stories are fairy tales.
The dark woods in a Kate story may
take the form of a grimy urban avenue or a wood-paneled den
and house in the burbs.
But they are dark woods nonetheless.
Kate's characters are fairy tale characters,
both freed and bound by an intuitive logic that
makes no kind of sense except for the feeling kind.
Kate's fairy tale characters are clearly second generation.
Each character harbors a remembered fairy tale,
even as she lives out her own tale.
The wandering bride knows by heart the legend of the rose
that will bloom only when the beautiful child dies.
The daughter who atones is forever
haunted by the story of the ovens of World War II.
The bad and lonely sister would like
to be the little matchstick girl.
I think, because although the matchstick girl was just as
lonely and then ultimately dead, she was good instead of bad.
In Kate's fairy tales, as in real life, the atrocious
and the beautiful coexist.
That's the ur paradox--
the one that breaks every heart that ever beat or does
still beat.
The brutality of being abandoned, killed, or born ugly
is real.
But, fortunately, so are magic implements and friends
who offer help just when you need it and animals that speak.
Animals do speak.
You can see lots of animals speaking on YouTube.
It's really disturbing to see a dog trying to say I love you.
We don't just love Kate's stories,
we need Kate's stories because here it
is, almost 2011, but we're still sucking down
the bitter dregs of the era of the Enlightenment.
In the words of Cecil Collins, a mystical 20th century
British painter, "what an age to live in.
It bites into you with a formless
denying of the life in us."
Kate's writing provides some of the forms we
need to affirm the life in us.
She's the author of three novels--
The Complete Tales of Ketzia Gold, The Complete Tales
Of Merry Gold, and the forthcoming Complete Tales
of Lucy Gold.
She's the author of three children's books--
The Girl in the Castle Inside the Museum,
and The Lonely Book forthcoming, and The Girl
Who Wouldn't Brush Her Hair, also forthcoming.
She has published fiction and literary nonfiction
in Tin House, Western Humanities Review, Poetry International,
Puerto Del Sol, The Massachusetts Review,
and others.
Her most recent book is a lovely collection
of short stories entitled Horse, Flower, Bird.
Please join me in welcoming Kate Bernheimer.