Once upon a time, a girl walked into a library
and found a story.
She found many stories.
And she brought them home and read them
with the attention and open heart of any writer's best
reader.
The stories became part of who she was.
The pure form of the story coursed through her body
like a scent might, filling her.
Then this girl grew up.
And she went to the University of Arizona.
Actually, she'd already gone to Wesleyan University
and had already begun to spin her own tales.
Writing and reading are twins, of course.
Asked about the first of her three children's books,
The Girl in the Castle Inside the Museum, she responded,
"I wrote it as I write most of my fiction,
to get lost in a story, that is to evoke the sensation I get
when I'm reading any book that I love, that it's storybook
world, which can live in a picture book,
a collection of prose poems, a comic, or difficult novel
is the whole world."
A good tale is a whole world.
The girl knew this.
And yet in the bildungsroman we call the adult world,
it became increasingly clear that one, things were not
always fair.
And two a kind of story, a particular kind of story
that had made the girl's heart soar,
was being at least, ignored.
The girl turned woman now, became in service to
the story, a warrior.
Or in a gentler mode, you could call her
a patron, for one aspect of Kate Bernheimer's power is kindness.
She has written a genre redefining trio of novels--
The Complete Tales of Ketzia Gold,
The Complete Tales of Mary Gold, and The Complete Tales
of Lucy Gold.
As well, she's the author of two collections of stories, "Horse,
Flower, Bird," and the forthcoming,
"How a Mother Weaned Her Girl From Fairy Tales."
In the stories and novels both, her writing
is provocative, witty, and meaningful,
opening up new vistas and how we think of fiction.
But that's not all.
See how many stories Kate has lovingly
collected in the pages of The Fairy Tale Review,
the journal she founded in 2005, and in her three
major anthologies, most recently,
the World Fantasy award winning, My Mother, She Killed Me,
My Father, He Ate Me: 40 New Fairy Tales.
In addition, Kate has on more than one
occasion, rode out alone or in very small groups of lady
knights and gentlemen knights to fight for artistic freedom.
One example of this is her campaign
against the National Book Award Foundation's stipulation
that quote, "collections and/or retellings of folktales, myths,
and fairy tales are not eligible," for the award.
This important fight has come to a new stage, thanks in part,
to her efforts.
With her own writing, her editing projects, her teaching,
and her daily acts of advocacy and aesthetic generosity,
Kate gives stories from the immeasurable imagination,
a more evident lasting and righteous place at the table.
As she says in a manifesto on the subject, "in fairy tales,
every thought is as real as every rabbit."
I welcome that simple truth, especially
here in the MFA program and in the Poetry Center,
meeting places of expansive creativity.
So here she is.
Please welcome this fiercest of readers and writers,
Lady Knight and champion of the imagination, Kate Bernheimer.