For thousands of years, fantasy and faery stories have captured the secrecy, the intimacy, the hidden knowledge, and hopeful promise of comfort and refuge for children in distress. These stories offer an escape to a safe place where we can process our feelings when life’s dangers and mysteries threaten to overwhelm us. Within the emotional sanctuary of the faery tale, we find the shelter and security that frees our imagination to explore and discover who we really are. The trials that faery tale heroes face illustrate the process of revelation and transformation: from youth to adulthood, from victim to hero, from passivity to action. Within faery tales, we can mend what is broken; here, we can be reborn and love again.
Uniquely for a literary genre, faery tales are historically associated with women’s voices rather than a literate elite. This lends a particular familiarity, accessibility, and variety to the tales, prompting folklorist Marina Warner to call faery tales “a common language of the imagination.”
In this five-part series of workshops and speaker events, we invite USC students, faculty, and staff to sit together around the candlelight and listen to acclaimed contemporary fantasy authors as they tell their favorite faery stories, read from their own work, and speak about their creative process, ultimately guiding us to explore and discover our own. We will experience how these tales engage and entertain while also serving as a valuable tool and model for emotional well-being, healing, and personal growth.
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For more information: Kiel Shaub