Hello, humans of the internet…

Once upon a time, Cinderella was a cyborg…

Once upon a time, Beauty was a Beast…

Once upon a time, Sleeping Beauty was a spy…

If you just read the three lines above, you may have noticed that something seemed a bit off. You may have even thought I’m rather confused since I’m getting certain things wrong about stories that everyone knows.

Then again, you might just know exactly what the three lines above are referencing: retellings of three well-known fairy tales.

For the uninitiated, fairy-tale retellings are part of a relatively new genre that takes aspects of an old story and re-incorporates them into a newer version of the same story. For example, an author might choose to rewrite one of the classic fairy tales in a different time period. In this newer version the role of hero and villain might be reversed. The story might even be retold from the perspective of a side character. There are literally thousands of ways an author could choose to change things up while still capturing some essence of the original fairy tale.

This blog will be dedicated to sharing and discussing all aspects of fairy tales and their retellings. It will examine their origins, stylometry, and just what constitutes a retelling. There are a million different facets of this area of study that I cannot wait to explore and hope you’ll enjoy with me!

Fairy truly yours,

Grace W. Wong