Terri Windling
When writers want to work with fairy tale material, I ask them to look beyond the Disney versions and beyond the Victorian versions-to go back to the older fairy tales, with all their complexities. Then, when you create your art, use those as your tools, and not Walt Disney imagery.
When I was younger, I was in love with everything about the British Isles, from British folklore to Celtic music. That was always where my passions were as a young girl, and so I studied folklore as a college student in England and Ireland.
When I started in the business, there was a thing called adult fantasy, but nobody quite knew what it was, and most publishers didn't have an adult fantasy list. They had science fiction lists, which they stuck a little bit of fantasy into.
What I look for is a story I remember after I've read it... and one with an excellent mastery of the writing craft.
What I find interesting about folklore is the dialogue it gives us with storytellers from centuries past.
We've always lived in dark times. There has always been a range of human experience from the sublime to the brutal, and stories reflect it. It's no less brutal now; each age has its horrors.
There's that old adage about how there's only seven plots in the world and Shakespeare's done them all before.
There have been a number of us working very, very hard to bring myth and fairy tales into public consciousness, through fantasy literature and other media. I hope we're succeeding in some small way.
There are plenty of bad editors who try to impose their own vision on a book.
There are certainly people who know a lot more about folklore than I do. Marina Warner, Jack Zipes, Joseph Campbell-the great folklorists of our times. I'm more of a popularizer in a way; I think of myself as Marina Warner Lite.
The first job I was offered was as an editorial assistant. I think it was the best thing for me, in terms of being a storyteller by nature, to have spent years being an editor because I learned so much from it.
The fantasy field is very broad and I despair a bit when I see people fighting about what gets to be called fantasy.
Talk to any first-novelist desperate to get published and you'll see that its very hard for first-novelists now.
Since fantasy isn't about technology, the accelleration has no impact at all. But it's changed the lives of fantasy writers and editors. I get to live in England and work for a New York publisher!
Robert Jordan, whether he's writing with passion or not, I don't know.
Read the folklore masters. Go to galleries. Walk in the woods. That's what you need to be an artist or storyteller.
Read Joseph Campbe! And Lewis Hyde!
One of the best things about folklore and fairy tales is that the best fantasy is what you find right around the corner, in this world. That's where the old stuff came from.
My favorite adult novels change every year. At the moment it's Power, by Linda Hogan-a Native American writer.
My book collection is primarily in America, since that's where I've lived most of my life.