Fairy Tales, Folklore and Feminism

Diane Zinna and Amber Sparks delve into the folklore that inspires their female-driven, otherworldly fiction. Zinna’s debut novel The All-Night Sun follows a teacher’s journey alongside a magnetic new student to a Midsommar’s Eve celebration in Sweden, where events quickly take a dark turn. Publisher’s Weekly calls it an “intimate debut [that] dazzles with original language, emotional sentience, and Swedish folklore as it plumbs the depths of grief, loss, and friendship.” In And I Do Not Forgive You: Stories and Other Revenges, Sparks’ fairytale-like short stories blend myth with the modern, from a teenager befriending a ghost in a trailer park to what really happened to the Sabine Women. Publisher’s Weekly writes that Sparks’ “wry, feminist” stories “smuggle incredible emotional impact into surprisingly few pages.”