2017 Nebula Conference

Fairy tales have dominated our cultural imagination for centuries. From the Brothers Grimm to the Countess d’Aulnoy, from Charles Perrault to Hans Christian Anderson, storytellers have crafted tales that have always found a place in our hearts.  These folk and fairy stories have a long tradition of shifting their shapes as they're passed from hand to hand: Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling's Fairy Tale Series invited numerous authors to unfold stories and ballads into novel length; Angela Carter and Francesca Lia Block modernised, darkened and subverted familiar stories. But what connects these beyond the mutations of plot? Is there such a thing as "a fairy way of writing?" This panel will explore the imaginative space of folk and fairy tales, beyond straight-up retellings, as a mode of composition.