During her Reddit AMA last week, Uprooted author Naomi Novik revealed her next big project: She is expanding “Spinning Silver,” a short story she wrote for Saga Press’ anthology The Starlit Wood, into a novel. The anthology, edited by Dominik Parisien and Navah Wolfe, includes fairy tale retellings from Seanan McGuire, Genevieve Valentine, Sofia Samatar, Max Gladstone, Amal El-Mohtar, and more; “Spinning Silver” is a reexamination of the trickster Rumpelstiltskin.
The summary for The Starlit Wood gives you an idea of what these reimaginings are like:
Once upon a time. It’s how so many of our most beloved stories start.
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 all sorts of tales that have always found a place in our hearts.
Now a new generation of storytellers have taken up the mantle that the masters created and shaped their stories into something startling and electrifying.
Packed with award-winning authors, this anthology explores an array of fairy tales in startling and innovative ways, in genres and settings both traditional and unusual, including science fiction, western, and post-apocalyptic as well as traditional fantasy and contemporary horror.
From the woods to the stars, The Starlit Wood: New Fairy Tales takes readers on a journey at once unexpected and familiar, as a diverse group of writers explore some of our most beloved tales in new ways across genres and styles.
Publishers Weekly praised “Spinning Silver” in its review, providing more insight into Novik’s retelling:
The anthology ends with Naomi Novik’s “Spinning Silver,” in which Novik confronts the anti-Semitism that Jane Yolen and others have found latent in the Grimms’ version of “Rumplestiltzkin,” rewriting it into a tale of Jewish heroism in the face of hostility from gentile neighbors as well as magical threats from fairy folk. Novik’s ability to weave together sympathy for the story’s traditional antagonist, the little man who can produce gold on a whim, and traditional heroine, the daughter who is forced to produce in order to save herself and her father, by combining them in the person of her protagonist, Miryem, makes this story a virtuoso turn.
The Starlit Wood will be published on October 18, and we’ll eagerly look forward to updates from Novik on the progress of her project.
