Faerie News

Dear Fey Friends,

First day of Spring,

a fairy died.

🦋 
Fey Queen 

Anne Atkins flew 

from this mortal realm. 🌷

Anne opened Wonderwings Fairy Shop - first fairy shop in the world - 1980s in Richmond. 🧜🏿‍♂️🧜‍♀️She followed up with its more raucous, carnival sibling, Wonderwings Fairground. 🎪Countless similar venues opened around the globe by her inspiration, most closely and enduringly 

Myths & Legends in Gisborne 

with Wonderwings fairy Dee. 🦋

Anne was a patron and collaborator across ethereal arts, from music to sculpture. Many of us learned oral fairytale storytelling from Vic’s storytelling guild founder Nell Bell at Wonderwings. 

A glass artist herself, Anne made exquisite wands. 🌟

Her legacy includes eco-mythos, with freshly gathered eucalyptus leaves strewn in the story garden. 

In addition to catering for youngsters, there were also adult sessions, steeped in mythology and respect for diversity. 📘🦋

🦋

She is honoured in the anthology South of the Sun: Australian fairy tales for the 21st century.

Here is an earlier tribute I wrote at a Wonderwings reunion

More pics of beloved Anne across decades...

Fey Anne, you conjured Muses, embraced eccentricity, revelled in whimsy, kindness, passion, ebullience, glee; and all the way to Fairyland, the flowers know you.

 

Anne & Nigel at our wedding 1993

🦋

🦋

Anne Atkins
at Wonderwings Fairy Picnic

Anne Atkins 

🦋

🦋Fairy Funeral: 

Sunday 11th September 2022

          3pm 🦋

Collingwood Children's Farm / Abbotsford Convent 

Fairies of all ages & cultures welcome🦋

Anne Atkins at Midsummer Faerie Rade

photo by Louisa John-Krol
blue tree roses by Rachael Hammond
🦋

 

Faerie News

Happy Wintering

to Southern Hemisphere friends. 

And to Northerners, 

Happy Summer ye all, fey darlings! 

Come join us at Bendigo Library for

Love of the Fey

A weeklong exhibition by Lorena Carrington
culminating in an event Thursday 30th June,
storytelling & songs by Louisa John-Krol
with guest readings, book chats, 
face painting & costumes!
Dress as your most enchanting selves... 

Celebrating our intercultural, illustrated anthology

South of the Sun: Australian fairy tales for the 21st century

(Australian Fairy Tale Society & Serenity Press)

Special guests: 

Fairy Moss by Lorena Carrington

Carmel Bird
Jenni Heinrich
Thang Dac Luong

Hosts:

Faerie Bard 

Louisa John-Krol* 

& Photographic Illustrator 

Lorena Carrington 

both awardees of the national Australian Fairy Tale Award 

in 2020 and 2021 respectively. 

*Louisa being your mandolin-mad Fae of this blog. 

Squeeeee!

Please register attendance here

Nearly booked out!

About each session:

1) Afternoon storytelling & songs for 8-12 year-olds 

Tween, Teen & Keen, 2pm - 3pm

More info at Eventbrite

In between, enjoy the exhibition by our cover artist Lorena Carrington, 

and the screen loop of other illustrators involved,

or meet & greet, stroll, sip a tummy warmer, or snuggle with a book!

2) Early Evening music, storytelling, readings, Q&A for grownups: 

Timely & Timeless: 5:30pm - 6:30pm

More info at Eventbrite

Storytelling, Art, Music, Readings, Book Chats, Costume Prizes!

Poetic Artists: Bee Williamson & Erin-Claire Barrow

 

Faerie News

Poetess Bee Williamson, whose eco-ethereal spirit buzzes my bee, has published art & poems ripe on time for Australian Spring. 

Quoting Anne Frank with its title A Comfort for Every Sorrow, it carries Bee's signature blend of humanity, sense of ecological urgency, simplicity ('this is small/but this is our green faith', page 49) and ecstatic wonder. Amid the sensuousness are aching questions ('Why does everything separate me? Fragment me?' page 106), as if the poet has become a receptacle for a universe struggling to understand itself.

A treat for reading under a tree during our times of seclusion.

Here is where I bought my hardcopy that flew swiftly over the garden to my door.  There's also an ebook version.

Comfort for Every Sorrow
by Bee Williamson

Dancer by Bee Williamson

Faerie News 

continued ... 

Fairytale illustrator 

Erin-Claire Barrow 

has launched a Kickstarter to create limited edition prints of fairytale covers, here

In Erin-Claire's words:

'These illustrated book covers for five well-known traditional fairy tales are reimagined with strong, diverse heroines and are full of warmth and life. The illustrations capture essential elements of each fairy tale – such as the way Beauty brings warmth and life to the stillness of the Beast’s castle in Beauty and the Beast – with a modern twist, building curiosity about the story itself. ' 

Erin-Claire Barrow

I recommended Erin-Claire's art and writing in previous posts here at Australian Fairy Review, e.g. her book The Adventurous Princess and other feminist fairy tales (Odyssey Books), a set of cards featuring those pictures, and an illustration she created for the inaugural recipient of the Australian Fairy Tale Society Award. She also features in the new anthology South of the Sun: Australian fairy tales for the 21st century (2021, Serenity Press); notably, of the fifty two contributors, she is one of only two who illustrated their own stories.

As another brilliant Australian illustrator Lorena Carrington put it:

Visit Erin-Claire Barrow's Kickstarter here

I've published a book - and won a fairytale award!

Faerie News

In Australia's misty Midwinter, something munificent shone. Come closer: it's a book. But not an ordinary one at all. Oh no, my friends. It's like that golden ball a frog once found at the bottom of a well, gleaming in the depths.

South of the Sun: Australian fairy tales for the 21st century is an intercultural, illustrated anthology of contemporary fairy stories for grownups. 

Created as a partnership between Australian Fairy Tale Society and WA publisher Serenity Press, it garnered stellar endorsements by leading authors Kate Forsyth, Angela Slatter and Juliet Marillier, and includes tales by other luminaries such as Carmel Bird, Sophie Masson, Cate Kennedy and Eugen Bacon, along with artwork by Kathleen Jennings and Lorena Carrington, who designed the book's cover. 

I'll have more to say about the quest soon - its challenges, joys, surprises and why the resulting concoction is so groundbreaking.

It's been a hectic year, with the Bendigo Writers Festival, Australian Fairy Tale Society conference, at which I co-presented with one of our book's participants, T.D. Luong, and other shenanigans. I hope to catch up on reviews soon. For now, I passionately invite you to support our years of research, fundraising, collaboration, editing, contractual liaison and all other aspects of this publication, by procuring your own copy and buying one for a friend!

Here's the link to order. 

Please help us spread the news. 

It's been such an honour to receive the Australian Fairy Tale Society Award, I still can't quite shake the thrill, like seeds in my hair from gardening during lockdown free of shampoo. 

There was steep competition, with nominees making great contributions to this field: storyteller Jo Henwood, author Serene Conneeley and glass artist Spike Deane. The annual prize means being custodian of a bewitching frog sculpture by Spike herself, for a year. Then it hops over to the next awardee in Australia.

Fairytale Frog by Spike Deane

Numerological magic can be irresistible for faerie folk; I'm the 5th awardee of this prize, awarded in the 5th month of the year, my birth month in which I turned 55; the pentacle (pentagram, apple seedpod) is one of my favourite symbols. So mine is the 5th little plaque on the wooden base. 

A beautiful glass dome rests above, with a copper frog musing behind it in silhouette: a tribute to the AFTS logo, a native tree frog.

It was also a joy to open an enchanting artwork by the previous awardee (photographic illustrator Lorena Carrington) who created it especially for me: hence the cats, forest and a dryad covered in leaves.

I

Dryad by Lorena Carrington

Fey thanks,

Louisa Pentacle

(Louisa John-Krol)

Faerie News

Faerie News

It is an honour to be nominated for the 
Australian Fairy Tale Society Award 2021, alongside three other nominees, each of whom is outstanding. 

If you are a member, please vote. 

If not, please consider joining & voting. 
Here's a glimpse of my fairy-ing these decades:

Within the Australian Fairy Tale Society:

• Founding Victoria's Fairy Tale Ring
• Several committee roles including President
• Co-founding & co-editing the AFTS Ezine, now in its 9th volume
• Co-editing the AFTS Anthology, South of the Sun: Australian fairy tales for the 21st century 
• Performing in and/or co-organising national conferences
• Liaising with the national Arts Law Centre to formulate Artist First contracts

Before / Beyond AFTS:

• Releasing eight solo albums and as many collaborations exploring fairytales, myths etc, mostly on fairy-world indie label Prikosnovenie in France, generating acclaim through reviews and interviews in several nations
• Storytelling at Wonderwings Fairy Shop, first of its kind in the world, inspiring AFTS co-founder Reilly McCarron along her fairytale path
• Festival performing (e.g. Moomba, Royal Melbourne Show, Lit Fest, Midwinter in SA, Faerieworlds in Oregon USA, Trolls et Legendes in Belgium) & in castles, town halls, ballrooms, historic homesteads, botanic gardens and legendary venues such as La Loco in Paris
• Publishing a fairy tale & essay in a peer-reviewed journal, TEXT, and fables, poems, reviews etc. in other mags & books
• Supporting The Monash Fairy Tale Salon, Storytelling Australia Vic / Guild & other fey groups, e.g. sponsoring a resident fairy storyteller of Midsummer Faerie Rade (Golden Owl Events), co-hosting my own events such as Phantosea x 3 & Feline Faery Fest x 3, and helping other fairies find collaborations, opportunities etc.
• Pitching a fairytale edition of Victorian Writer to Writers Victoria, resulting in several of us publishing articles/ tales
• Liaising with Bendigo Writers Festival to put together a fairytale panel involving some of our book's participants, and representing them in a major regional newspaper Bendigo Advertiser

Louisa John-Krol 2020

Please vote this week, from Monday 10th May 2021

To join AFTS ($25), go to the Membership page 

Full details of nominees here

Thank you

 

Invitation - Date TBA (possibly postponed due to shipment delay)

Bendigo Writers Festival: Strewth !

Congrats to the participants of Bendigo Writers Festival who are also in our anthology South of the Sun: Australian fairy tales for the 21st century. 

Four of these six talented, fey women gave stellar spiels in a fairytale panel focusing on discussion points around the book. Here is a photo I took just before they exited the stage afterwards:

Claudia Barnett, Lorena Carrington, Sophie Masson, Eugen Bacon

Claudia Barnett, Lorena Carrington, Sophie Masson, Eugen Bacon

Above: On stage at the Capital Theatre, Bendigo, Bendigo Writers Festival 2021 Photo by Louisa John-Krol

Below: more happy snaps from participants of South of the Sun. Many had additional sessions in the programme, to discuss their other books. 

Louisa John-Krol, Rachel Nightingale, Eugen Bacon

Rachel Nightingale & Eugen Bacon

Louisa John-Krol & Anne E Stewart

Left & Below Right: Outside the Capital Theatre, grouping for the fairytale panel, from left to right: Lorena Carrington, Claudia Barnett, Sophie Masson & Eugen Bacon

Photo: Bendigo Writers Festival

Carmel Bird
on steps of Capital Theatre
Bendigo Writers Festival 2021
photo by Brian Nankervis