Project MUSE®: Fairy Tale Review - Latest Articles
https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/835
Project MUSE®: Latest articles in Fairy Tale Review.daily12026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00text/htmlen-USVol. 1 (2011) through current issueLatest Articles: Fairy Tale ReviewTWOProject MUSE®Fairy Tale Review2327-68191556-6153Latest articles in Fairy Tale Review. Feed provided by Project MUSE®Editor's Note
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986956
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Setting: A long dining table, dinner party already in progress. Dishes circulate. Candles flicker. The clink of cutlery punctuates thought. The room is flanked with floor-to-ceiling windows in which the candelabras reflect. It is nighttime.Characters: Anca, Billie, Catherine, Kate, Jon, Matthew, NazliIn July, I was in the thick of reading submissions for this issue when my four-year-old asked me to play a board game called Memory Palace. He invited me to choose a room. I chose the dining room. Then, he invited me to seat a guest. A peacock seemed natural for the head of the table.Animals are there and in my head.I think fairy tales are of, and occupy, this same realm.*Henceforth, speakers tip goblets, gesture with
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/835/image/coversmallEditor's Note2026-04-02text/htmlen-USEditor's Note2026-04-022026TWOProject MUSE®89902026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-04-02The Disappearing Girl, and: It does me no good, and: Peeling Oranges, Nude, On a Pink Settee
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986957
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Not for wanting but for fathoming, moon in red horizon, powdered sugar falling from a late morning star on the abandoned chateau above the headwaters, she milled back and forth in front of the rattling armoire as blood swept from the two keyholes in her neck. When was Was? Now, now said her ermine coat on the chaise lounge. For the staving off, the wait of all, she stoked the heart with steel-prong. The flames growled at her like glass. Everything was so easy to see through. Even her. She was a disappearing girl. Her whole life a trick of the light. Her father's model. Her husband's muse. Her employer's tantalus. I amuse. Binding the handles of the armoire with a silk sash, she promised herself to wait before doing
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/835/image/coversmallThe Disappearing Girl, and: It does me no good, and: Peeling Oranges, Nude, On a Pink Settee2026-04-02text/htmlen-USThe Disappearing Girl, and: It does me no good, and: Peeling Oranges, Nude, On a Pink Settee2026-04-022026TWOProject MUSE®93222026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-04-02The Oracle and the Guard
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986958
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The oracle lived in a large apartment with seven other employees of the kingdom. She was the only oracle, although there was also a psychic, and they had never really talked about who covered what, if there might be too much overlap. The oracle said she was about prediction, big or small, that's what she told others, but really she was most interested in the intimate internal. Her talent was reading people and telling them what they were already emitting. The psychic did mention once, helpfully, on a stroll through a neglected farm to collect wild herbs in a wicker basket, that she was especially into the larger prophecies, the storms of change. She, the psychic, also used props: she had an actual crystal ball on a
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/835/image/coversmallThe Oracle and the Guard2026-04-02text/htmlen-USThe Oracle and the Guard2026-04-022026TWOProject MUSE®317692026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-04-02The Horse is Not a Horse
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986960
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Then Cassandra revealed the future, openinglips the gods had ruled no Trojan would
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/835/image/coversmallThe Horse is Not a Horse2026-04-02text/htmlen-USThe Horse is Not a Horse2026-04-022026TWOProject MUSE®63352026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-04-02The Sardine Widow
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986961
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The Sardine Widow walks from her shack toward the docks where the cannery crouches, waiting for a catch that seldom comes. The rocks below the path awash with salt water, the dried stink of fish heads, fish guts, gobs of fat left with the high tide. The sky above dark and diamond.Only one cannery remains from the great days of the sardine fishery. The Sardine Widow walks by great metal-sided buildings now abandoned, rusted and half-collapsed, tin roofs tilted and spilled off the stringers, filled with gloom. She nears the moorings of the single seaworthy boat, a purse seiner. Other boats rot at their buoys, sunk to the gunwales. Two pallid men lean against a bollard, gaunt and hollow-eyed—fishermen, waiting for a
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/835/image/coversmallThe Sardine Widow2026-04-02text/htmlen-USThe Sardine Widow2026-04-022026TWOProject MUSE®82222026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-04-02Chocolate Mama
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986962
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It starts with a message. A Tinder ping at 8:03 a.m.: Hey, chocolate mama. And already, before she's even had her coffee, the words feel like they're crawling, slow and sticky, up the spine of her phone and then into her hands, clinging to her palms like honey gone rancid. The screen stays lit longer than it should, or maybe time stretches out in the silence after, a beat too long, her face reflected back at her through the letters. She thinks of all the places those words come from, the weight of them pressed down through histories she didn't agree to carry: the docks, the sugarcane fields, the nightclubs, the postcards. She puts the phone down, doesn't answer, but the residue is already on her skin.By 10 a.m.
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/835/image/coversmallChocolate Mama2026-04-02text/htmlen-USChocolate Mama2026-04-022026TWOProject MUSE®71682026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-04-02A Thousand Ways to Eat a Heart or: Is It Worth Going Inside the Sagrada Familia?
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986964
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Watch.The first boy throws her glass heart in the trash and laughs. Second grade. The entire class high on Capri-Suns and Snickerdoodles, intensely constructing paper bouquets for Mother's Day. She makes the mistake of telling the first boy she loves him in a precarious position on the monkey bars. He hates this. And so, this boy dumps her heart—purple smoothed down to a dull amethyst—in a trashcan alongside a trio of half dead oranges. The oranges seeping their decay into the invisible arteries, creating a stained glass of mauve and slime.Understandably, she waits years between. Her mother never tells her the stories about her tribe, the kings becoming kings because they ate the heart of the departing crown.If
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/835/image/coversmallA Thousand Ways to Eat a Heart or: Is It Worth Going Inside the Sagrada Familia?2026-04-02text/htmlen-USA Thousand Ways to Eat a Heart or: Is It Worth Going Inside the Sagrada Familia?2026-04-022026TWOProject MUSE®78252026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-04-02Safe and Sound
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986966
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Not wanting to be caught watching the street, Becca Carpenter stands to one side of the living room window. From the rear of the house come sounds of a barroom brawl: fists smack flesh, glass shatters (ping-pingping), heavy stuff crashes and collapses and breaks to bits. A woman screams. The scream—very high-pitched—isn't convincing, is it? But then, how often would you need to hear genuine screams to become expert at spotting false other ones?It might be interesting to scream. Just to hear how loud you'd sound.In the street—a pleasant, Midwestern street of older homes—an early November wind pushes along a dusty plastic bag. Flag of the junked-up, failing world, thinks Becca—and jumps as the cellphone in her hand
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/835/image/coversmallSafe and Sound2026-04-02text/htmlen-USSafe and Sound2026-04-022026TWOProject MUSE®496612026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-04-02Yahrzeit
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986967
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Happiness does not need to be transformed: happiness is its own end.It feels like a fairy tale to say I grew up at a time where our neighbors were my kvaterin.The eldest son of the family next door was my godfather and the middle daughter of the family across the street was my godmother. This was back in the seventies when weed was mild and seedy and smoked from hand-rolled cigarettes, when the religions of the book were loosening up around interfaith marriage to maintain their numbers. The kids in my neighborhood, most of us children of immigrants, second and third generation, played unsupervised up and down the oak-lined streets until our mothers called us in for supper. My godparents were the same age as my
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/835/image/coversmallYahrzeit2026-04-02text/htmlen-USYahrzeit2026-04-022026TWOProject MUSE®327612026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-04-02Notes for Rough Draft
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986971
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Notes for Rough Draft Senior Capstone Project 2024 Gender and Sexuality Studies"The Sleeping Beauty," Walter Crane, 1883One of the earliest versions of the Sleeping Beauty tale comes from Perceforest, a work of medieval prose from around 1340–44, by an anonymous author, probably a monk, who wrote it at the behest of a count (did he get paid? how long did it take to write?). The extensive French-language text details various hero journeys under the reign of the new king (of England? if so, why is the text in French?) Perceforest, including the story of Troïlus and Zellandine. In this melange of Greek myths, Arthurian legend, and other medieval works (CK), Zellandine falls asleep mysteriously, after getting a
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/835/image/coversmallNotes for Rough Draft2026-04-02text/htmlen-USNotes for Rough Draft2026-04-022026TWOProject MUSE®397382026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-04-02Giving It Up
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986972
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The machine needs forty dreams a day. Their youth makes their dreams supple, and the machine is toothless, and the machine is important, so they curl up on battered bean bag chairs and let the experts slime their hairlines with conductive gel.The machine needs sixty-two dreams a day. Their youth makes their dreams delicate, and the machine is easily spooked, and the machine is important, so they start having slumber parties down in the machine's pit, where they invent clapping games that aren't thrown off when all knowledge clatters to the floor of one's brain for 2.3 seconds.The machine needs eighty-nine dreams a day. Their youth makes their dreams complex, and the machine likes weightier fare, and the machine is
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/835/image/coversmallGiving It Up2026-04-02text/htmlen-USGiving It Up2026-04-022026TWOProject MUSE®38302026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-04-02Victorian Women Don't Cook
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986975
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The interview went as such—Madame Glochid: What is that smell? It is sensational.Just me, I presume. I do not bathe very often.Madame Glochid: Sit down, little idiot.(She did not have an extra chair. I sat on the rug beneath her.)Madame Glochid: What will you cook?I can skin chickens, rabbits, foxes, anything you like.Madame Glochid: That will be sufficient. Come closer. I would like to smell you again.In my time with the Madame, I have prepared seventeen foxes, two porcupines, 24 mice (served like crudité), and three proper pigs, surrounded by their piglets. But today the Madame wants something different. She is celebrating her sister's impending death. Says she can smell it from across the forest.Madame Glochid:
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/835/image/coversmallVictorian Women Don't Cook2026-04-02text/htmlen-USVictorian Women Don't Cook2026-04-022026TWOProject MUSE®79612026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-04-02The Clifford Family
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986976
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Half the time Mrs. Clifford brooded about Elizabeth, her oldest daughter, who'd lived with Mr. Clifford after their divorce. Elizabeth loved her stepmother and wore a chain, with a gold locket holding the dead woman's picture, around her neck. Mrs. Clifford would have been happy if her ex-husband hadn't died of a heart attack a year after he became a widower because then Elizabeth wouldn't have been living in her house. Perhaps she'd have liked her daughter if she hadn't taken after Mr. Clifford. Her second child, Sandra, who had inherited many personality traits from her, had remained completely loyal after the divorce.The two sisters were different in appearance—the older golden-haired, pale, and slender; the
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/835/image/coversmallThe Clifford Family2026-04-02text/htmlen-USThe Clifford Family2026-04-022026TWOProject MUSE®321482026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-04-02The Price of Sea Salt
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986977
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The first time I laid eyes on Urashima Tarō, he was holding the most disgusting fish I had ever seen.It was the enormity of it that first snagged my attention, the fish so large, it looked like it could have swallowed him whole. He was ten then, to my nine, but seemed unusually short for his age. A summer growth spurt would soon rectify that, making him insufferably smug in the process, but in the moment, on that day, he was small, wiry, and sunburnt."Hi there," he said. "Would you like this giant fish?"I gave him a look, then closed the front door.My mother, working at the table just behind me, nearly dropped her work in her lap."Taeko," she gasped, setting her half-woven basket aside. "What are you doing?"I
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/835/image/coversmallThe Price of Sea Salt2026-04-02text/htmlen-USThe Price of Sea Salt2026-04-022026TWOProject MUSE®271622026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-04-02Box of Teeth
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986978
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The tooth-puller espied the lovely, laughing girl, and suddenly exclaimed: "You have beautiful teeth, you girl there, who are laughing; if you want to sell me your palettes, I will give you a gold napoleon apiece for them…" "What are my palettes?" asked Fantine. "The palettes," replied the dental professor, "are the front teeth, the two upper ones." "How horrible!" exclaimed Fantine. "Two napoleons!" grumbled a toothless old woman who was present. "Here's a lucky
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/835/image/coversmallBox of Teeth2026-04-02text/htmlen-USBox of Teeth2026-04-022026TWOProject MUSE®341452026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-04-02The Way I See It
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986980
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once a month my father takes my brother and they do father and son things. during this time mother and i don't do mother and daughter things because we are too busy enjoying life without brother and father and having our alone time. this time instead of my father choosing a place to go, he is leaving it up to my brother to choose. my brother gets stressed out so easily and feels as if this is some kind of punishment or something and i am trying to convince him that it is not a punishment at all but a chance to get our father to have some fun. our father is very father-ish. he does not wear modern man fashionable clothes or do anything super modern. he is not one of those fathers that plays video games with us or
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/835/image/coversmallThe Way I See It2026-04-02text/htmlen-USThe Way I See It2026-04-022026TWOProject MUSE®139692026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-04-02Lost and Found
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986983
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It was their eighth date and things were progressing. Charlotte and Grant sat in an all-night diner off of Broadway finishing their meal when he asked her for the sixth time that day to please, please slip it to him. Charlotte was eating a chicken salad and Grant was eating meatloaf. He said he wanted to see it. Just for a second. The curiosity was killing him. She had promised to give him a peek before the weekend was over, and when he pointed his stubby finger to the hands on his watch moving imperceptibly towards midnight, Charlotte finally left for the bathroom to cough it up.Most people don't know the heart can come out so easily and, although her mother had warned her, Charlotte didn't understand what a grave
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/835/image/coversmallLost and Found2026-04-02text/htmlen-USLost and Found2026-04-022026TWOProject MUSE®291882026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-04-02Comfort Food
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986984
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The girl is always hungry, no matter how much she eats, and she eats a lot. Every day, a mountain of fluffy rice and a pondsworth of steaming dal and dozens of green tomatoes, sliced and salted, deep fried and served on a bed of raw spinach. It is never enough, but it isn't her fault. She has a deep-inside hunger—the kind of hunger that demands feeding. Wild, ungovernable. She cleans her dinner plate with her tongue till it shines like a sikka then begs her mother for more.When she was young, her mother gave in, softened by her sweet moon-face and her plump bright eyes. "You eat, meri jaan," she would say, moving food from her own plate into the girl's. But as the girl grew older, she continued to hunger while her
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/835/image/coversmallComfort Food2026-04-02text/htmlen-USComfort Food2026-04-022026TWOProject MUSE®93302026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-04-02Hunger Pains: Excerpt from an Unfinished Novel
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986985
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"I can't wait to get out of here," I tell Ruby over ice-cold cans of Bud Lite. Inside, Sheryl Crow is blasting from Danny's boombox, shaking his trailer. That boy has been throwing parties since freshman year when his mama went off with that gator hunter."You say that now," she says, laughing. I love her laugh, the same one I've heard since kindergarten. "God, I can't believe this is the last time I'll see you!""Not forever, drama queen," I say. "I'll be back come November. Who knows? If I can bum a ride, maybe I'll come back and visit you." Ruby takes out a roach and her pink lighter, flicking it about a dozen times until it finally ignites, interrupting the pitch black. We pass it back and forth 'til there's
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/835/image/coversmallHunger Pains: Excerpt from an Unfinished Novel2026-04-02text/htmlen-USHunger Pains: Excerpt from an Unfinished Novel2026-04-022026TWOProject MUSE®220472026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-04-02Inside You, and: Sated
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986986
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Inside you there are two grandmothers. One is good and one is evil. One is old and one is dead. The old one knits a red cloak while the dead one caws three times. They rock back and forth in your stomach. Like a hunger pang. You remember that there is a way to get rid of grandmothers. You fable them—stick them full of silver coins and bury them in the oven. All that is left is the perfume of ginger. The taste of salt on your tongue.I pulled the bonnet over my twitching ears and wondered, what if I hadn't eaten her? What if, instead, I knocked politely on the door, and the grandmother ushered me in, seating me at the wooden table as she ladled carrot and potato soup into a bowl in front of me, and I lapped at the
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/835/image/coversmallInside You, and: Sated2026-04-02text/htmlen-USInside You, and: Sated2026-04-022026TWOProject MUSE®32282026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-04-02Contributor Notes & Artist Statements
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986987
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TEMPERANCE AGHAMOHAMMADI is an Acolyte of the Exquisite. A trans Iranian American poet, medium, and critic, she is the author of BATTALION SHAPED GIRL (DISCOUNT GUILLOTINE, 2025). Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Kenyon Review, The Yale Review, New England Review, and elsewhere. She has received support from the Sewanee Writers' Conference. Hailing from the Northeast, she currently haunts the Midwest.The entire world animates within a tale; allegory becomes human, human becomes allegory, each detail bends toward its own life, its own meaning. Who is to say this does not apply to our world, too? What if the man sitting across from you at dinner is not a man, but is the figure of Catastrophe? What if
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/835/image/coversmallContributor Notes & Artist Statements2026-04-02text/htmlen-USContributor Notes & Artist Statements2026-04-022026TWOProject MUSE®235142026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-04-02