Many different lives
In first grade, a teacher praised her reading and set Debbie Kaufman on the road to becoming a lifelong reader. Reading let Kaufman experience a “number of different lives,” beginning with the magical lives of fairy tale heroines. Later, becoming a writer as well as a reader opened the door for Kaufman to use her own many “different lives”—from airport [...]
The National Book Festival
The Library of Congress invited Eloisa James to talk at the 2012 National Book Festival, making her the first romance author to speak at the festival. She claims that genre fiction transforms individual lives by resonating with reader emotions. We hope you enjoy the following selections! What lessons have you learned from reading romances or other genre novels? If you [...]
Fiction Fest and local RWA
Last weekend, I drove from Boston to Connecticut to meet writers and agents and readers at Fiction Fest, the annual conference of Connecticut’s RWA (Romance Writers of America) chapter. I set up my camera in the courtyard of the conference hotel, and I had a great time talking with dozens of people. Here are excerpts from my conversations with: Jamie [...]
Lady Jane’s Salon
Romance authors read aloud from their work on the first Monday of every month in the Soho district of New York City. The cover charge for Lady Jane’s Salon is $5 or “one gently used romance novel.” Net proceeds from the events support an end-of-year donation to a NYC women’s charity. Lady Jane’s Salon was launched in 2009 by three [...]
True love’s kiss
A kiss is just a kiss. . . or is it? No single fairy tale motif is more pervasive in American popular culture than “true love’s kiss.” It is the archetypal mechanism of transformation in our contemporary fairy tale tradition, with the power to wake comatose maidens, change animals and monsters into handsome princes, and prevent foolish mermaids from turning [...]
Magnetism of fairy tales
I grew up on a steady diet of fairy tales. My parents read them aloud to us, and then sprinkled Andrew Lang’s Blue, Green, Brown Fairy Books around the house. But much more importantly, fairy tales truly interested my father, Robert Bly. Years later, when I was in graduate school, he wrote a long analysis of one such story, called [...]
