Magical You
The Lamb and the Serpent by Arthur Rackham
Welcome! Please join us round the fire for story and song, or find yourself a quiet nook to read, as you wish. I'm Lunar Hine, Terri Windling's editorial assistant/studio elf, bringing you Myth & Moor updates, writing and art by Terri, and exceptional work by other artists and writers in the field.
Bumblehill News:
You did it! We asked you to help Terri get to 1000 subscribers and you did such a great job we have overshot that target. Thank you so much everyone. As promised, we have a great interview to share with you by way of celebration. The glorious Ellen Kushner, longtime friend of Terri, interviewing Terri at the 2022 World Fantasy Con when Terri received her Lifetime Achievement Award. This goes Public (ie. available for non-patrons to access) on 25th August at 8:00am BST.
We have decided on another video to share with you when we get to 1500 subscribers — or, rather, a series of small videos based on Terri’s Seven Little Tales from Hedgesoken Press. We're now at 1270 subscribers — so if you would kindly share our posts on social media or, even better, write your own, that would be wonderful. You could even actually talk about this newsletter to another human's face! Thank you everyone. This is such a kind and interesting community; it's a joy to welcome more people into it. (We can always, always build a bigger table.)
More good news:
Terri has become an Affiliate of The Carterhaugh School of Fantasy and the Fantastic and will be contributing a talk to their new course: Enchant. Regular readers will be aware of Terri's high regard for Sara Cleto and Brittany Warman, the Carterhaugh team. They bring all their PhD knowledge and skills, add a huge amount of enthusiasm, magic, and an inclusive warm welcome, give it all a stir in their sparkly cauldron and out come the most exciting and relevant courses I see available.
They introduce Enchant as ‘an empowering five-week course that uses fairy tales, folkore, and a dash of science to unlock the magic that can exist in your everyday life.You deserve good things. Beauty. Magic. Confidence, kindness, care. Ways to fight burnout and feel at home in your own skin. You deserve an enchanted life. And guess what? You're already good enough. Already worthy. Already magic. If you don't see it already, Enchant will help you remember.’
I think we could all do with more of that.
Terri says:
My contribution to the course is a talk exploring the Armless Maiden fairy tale (aka The Girl With No Hands) as a powerful story of surviving calamity, focusing on the role of "wild sanctuary" in processes of transformation, creativity, and healing. The talk will include storytelling by my husband Howard (a theatre director/performer/scholar), and will be exclusive to Carterhaugh.
Early Bird prices end 25th August midnight Eastern Time.
To read details of Enchant, including the fairy tales covered, plus all the extra workbook, journal, card deck, private Facebook group, and the three bonus talks you'll receive, go to the Enchant page, from where you can also choose a payment option and enroll. (If you use this link specifically, a portion of the price will support Terri's work on Myth & Moor.)
And if you can't wait to get magical with Sara and Brittany, you can jump in on the FREE Everyday Magic Challenge which is happening this week. All the videos have replay options, so any you've missed can still be watched. Covering things like:
How to use insight from fairy tales to see yourself and your trajectory in new ways
What bodylore has to teach you about your reflection and how you feel about it
Why folklore can both ground you and connect you to your local community and ecosystem
This is great. And it's completely FREE, with no obligations.
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Recommendations:
Terri 'highly, highly recommends' Jane Johnson's last book, The White Hare, set in Cornwall, and is looking forward to reading The Black Crescent, set in Morocco, which is just out. This article explains the romantic link between those places for Jane and her husband.
This Tor.Com article on the brilliance of Kelly Link's stories describes Link's heroic disregard for genre expectations and her supreme skill in using fairy tales as a jumping-off board to go somnewhere else entirely, but still with a sense of the original tales' bones in her writing. Much of Link's work is in The Myth & Moor Bookshop on the Fantasy Novels and Short Fiction shelves.
I recommend this article by Tiffany Trent, on writing and burnout. Patrons can access a discussion on similar themes (continued in the comments) by Terri here.
We also recommend "I will always be on the side of the libraries": A conversation with Neil Gaiman from the ilovelibraries site.
Terri says:
One of the many things I love about Neil is that he is a fierce supporter of libraries. As we should all be.
Toni Morrison once wrote that “access to knowledge is the superb, the supreme act of truly great civilizations. Of all the institutions that purport to do this, free libraries stand virtually alone in accomplishing this."
We need them now more than ever.
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Patreon
Aside from the interview by Ellen Kushner, Terri has other recent posts for her patrons, and a few public posts too:
An update, a thank you, and an introduction. Terri explains more of what's been happening over the past year or two, and introduces the new member of the Bumblehill team. (This video is public, you don’t need to be a Patron to view it — so please do go have a look, especially for the last part.)
Sharon Blackie Interviews Terri Windling. This was recorded for Sharon's Book Club when they were reading The Wood Wife.
The Chagford Show Sheep showing, terrier racing, stalls selling everything, and animals made of vegetables; Chagford Show has it all!
Come join me at Carterhaugh Terri's own words about the Enchant course and her talk within it.
Studio Companion More on that new team member and her important roles. :)
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Myth & Moor:
Terri is hoping to come back to Myth & Moor soon, after a long break to care for herself and others. Patrons will know that Terri has recently had a heart operation, and you'll all be glad to hear Terri is feeling the benefits of the extra spoons that has given her. Your warmth and love have surely helped her healing, thank you.
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Patron's Corner (your chance to be inspired by - and to support - the mythic arts community):
C. R. Shelidon
C.R. Shelidon is the pen-name of Chiara C. Rizzarda. After working in construction for 20 years and writing about other worlds in her spare time, she's trying to switch them around. Terri, with her efforts in divulging folklore and mythic arts, has been a role model in the work she's trying to do now.
Shelidon wrires a long-running blog on ‘folklore, mythology, fairy tales, and other quirky stuff’ and she has a Patreon ‘creating quirky Gothic and fantasy’ with monthly articles on art, history and folklore; on the writing process; and fiction. Please go have a look.
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That's all for now.
May all your wishes be wise,
Lunar
To become more involved in the mythic arts community, you can join in the conversation below each post on Myth & Moor, Terri's blog about folklore and mythology, the magical landscape of Dartmoor, England and life in the studio. (Please note that the blog has been on hiatus longer than expected due to health issues, but new posts will be available again as soon as she is fully back on her feet. In the meantime, there are years of archives to peruse.)
Terri's Patreon page is an opportunity to support her work from $1 per month and gain access to patron-only videos, Q&As and behind-the-scenes news, plus extra rewards for those able to contribute a little more.
Terri's art is available, on prints and dozens of gifty and practical things, in the MythandMoor Redbubble shop.
Terri's latest ebook is The Color of Angels is out now on Amazon. The UK link is here and the US link is here. This is a 1300 word story about myth, magic, disability and creativity. Largely set on Dartmoor, it loosely connected to The Wood Wife (but also easily read on its own). Meanwhile, The Wood Wife is available in new edition in the Tor Essentials series from Tor Books, with a lovely introduction by Delia Sherman.
UK book lovers: For shelves of books to peruse, go to the Myth & Moor bookshop page on uk.Bookshop.org - an organisation that supports independent bookshops. Everything you see is a Myth & Moor recommendation. We’re limited to books available on the site, but they are adding more all the time and so are we. You can also search for any book at all from the Myth & Moor page, and both Myth & Moor Press and our local independent bookshop get a few pennies each time you buy something. Browsers welcome.
You can find Terri on Bluesky, Twitter, and Facebook. (Terri has hit the maximum number of Facebook friends, but you can still follow her.) There are also Myth & Moor pages on Instagram and Pinterest curated by me.