creative writing

New Books, Beowulf, Habakkuk, Narnia, and a Question: How Vulnerable Should You Be on the Internet?

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Sunset through trees in winter


This winter was full of wonders: long, dark nights lit by Orion and the rest of the heavenly host around a silver moon; days of cold so bitter it felt like my finger bones were freezing; deep snow that froze into crunchy drifts; cancelled church services; drives in the snow; a vigil that ended in a beloved family member sailing to heaven. The days have rushed by like pine trees seen through the window of a moving train, a blur of living, changing detail.

I’ve wanted to update this blog for a while, but I promised myself when I started blog-writing in 2017 that I would only post if I had something worthwhile to offer to readers. Here’s an attempt at an offering: a look at some new books I’ve found, workshops and courses I’ve enjoyed, and a question that’s been burning in me for months.

New Books to Treasure

For the last 12 months, I’ve struggled to find good new books, but a few treasures stand out:

  • Christina Baehr’s Secrets of Ormdale series — A brand-new, five-book series set in late Victorian England — with an actually likable Christian heroine and dragons? I was so afraid to have hope for this series, but it was marvelous. Christian Bhaer knows her stuff: Scripture, lore, historical and cultural detail history, Anglo-Saxon poetry, literature, and the best slow-burn romance I’ve read in a while are shining threads in this series’s fantastic tapestry.
  • J.A. Myrhe’s Rwendigo Tales — Set in central Africa, these books tell the story of four physical and spiritual quests with beautiful prose, exciting drama, and deeply relatable characters. The thoughtful, image-rich, matter-of-fact style reminds me of Alan Patton’s Cry the Beloved Country; the mythical and spiritual elements remind me of C.S. Lewis’s Cosmic Trilogy.
  • Diana Glyer’s The Company They Keep — I’ve been meaning to read this one for ages. In beautiful language and lots of deep research, Glyer studies that group of rare imaginations that included C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. She argues that, contrary to what most scholars have argued over the decades, the Inklings did influence each other by resonating, opposing, editing, collaborating, and referring to each other in their creative works. Highly recommended for Inklings fans and artists who long for community.
  • James M. Hamilton Jr.’s Typology-Understanding the Bible’s Promise-Shaped Patterns: How Old Testament Expectations are Fulfilled in Christ — I picked this book up on Audible after searching for books on typology, a topic I’ve been curious about for a while. I loved it. It offers a clear and careful examination of the images and structures that Biblical authors use to point to Christ as the king, suffering servant, redeemer of captives, and divine bridegroom. It’s accessible for both scholars and laypeople; joyfully and reverently written; full of brilliant insights about the patterns of Scripture. My favorite takeaway is Hamilton’s argument that the types of Scripture are 1) definitely intended by each Biblical author (not an accident or readers’ construction); and 2) historically grounded (more than just artistic collaboration by the authors).

Beowulf, the Anglo-Saxons, and Learning to Love Something

I began this year with something appropriately wintry and mysterious: a “How to Read Beowulf” course from the House of Humane letters. I’m more of a fairy tale, roses-and-summer reader than a fan of the grim, otherworldy, silvery beauty of Anglo-Saxon literature, but I know C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien loved those tales, so I wanted to see what they saw.

The course was profound and thought-provoking in ways I didn’t expect. Angelina Stanford dived into:

  • The ruinous, twilight atmosphere of the Anglo-Saxon period
  • The violence of a culture that knew only revenge-killings and ransoms as means of justice
  • The nature of the monsters depicted
  • The very meaning and value of words

While I’m not sure I agree with every point made, the course left me with much to ponder and an ache to know more. I found myself going back to the very foundations of what a story is, how to read, and how to interpret literature – digging up my Literary Criticism and Theory notes from college, listening to more lectures on the Anglo-Saxon period, and wishing I had Tolkien’s gift for language. I’m newly convinced how much words matter, how every word and name is a story, and how Christ is the sun of righteousness who ends our dark night.

Habakkuk: The Word from the Watchtower

In February, I had the honor of going to a Charles Simeon Trust women’s workshop in Cambridge, MA. The Charles Simeon Trust Society trains Bible preachers and teachers in deep, thoughtful exegesis, theological reflection, and application. This workshop for women was as academically rigorous as any graduate seminar I experienced while also warmly encouraging. This workshop focused on practicing teaching prophetic literature with the book of Habakkuk.

Habakkuk is hard. The Charles Simeon Trust method begins with establishing the context and structure of a particular passage, and Habakkuk’s flow of thought is initially confusing. But it’s beautiful. Habakkuk’s earnest cry to the Lord, and the Lord’s sovereign and gracious response, are deeply comforting. The hymn of praise at the end is one I chose as an anthem for the past years, a song for troubled times.

This workshop showed me how clear, simple, and clean good Bible teaching should be. In my few attempts at teaching, I’ve often tried to dump all my insights, observations, musings, meditations, questions, and research on my poor helpless audience. Instead, the workshop taught me to distill my work into a simple main point that people will remember. For example, my original main point for a practice session on Habakkuk 3:1-19 was Christ is coming to administer justice and rescue His people, no matter how barren circumstances become. After workshopping this part of my presentation with my small group, I managed to streamline it down to Rejoice in Christ’s coming rescue even in barren times — turning an overflowing sentence into a comforting exhortation.

“Writing with The Horse and His Boy”: Rediscovering Old Loves

Yes, my life is merely a progression from one online literary course to another. This one was particularly fun because it was run by Jonathan Rogers, my writing teacher and the proprietor of the Habit writing community, which has been a source of delight, fellowship, encouragement, thought-provoking discussion, and community.
My creative inspiration, which has been fairly dry since January 2023, started to run again in a few of the writing exercises we did together. I remembered how much I love The Horse and His Boy: the beautiful, crisp, clear settings, Shasta’s intensely relatable awkwardness, self-pity, and courage; Bree’s pompous dignity; Aravis’s pride and honor; and the hilarious addresses to the reader. I was newly encouraged to follow tried-and-true writing wisdom like:

  • Look through your characters’ eyes and develop them from the inside, by what they notice and how they react
  • Stick with concrete details
  • Remember that each conversation has layers of dialogue: informational, atmospheric, relational, and more

If you are a creative writer curious about the intersection of theology and writing, longing for some practical tips for craftsmanship, or looking for community, please look out for the next Habit course.

A Question of Authenticity: How Vulnerable Should You Be on the Internet?

This question has been brewing in me for years: how vulnerable should you be on the internet?

I think this question started when I began blog-writing after college. I was inspired by the beautifully-crafted blogs and creative fiction of writers from places like the Rabbit Room or podcasts by artists, entrepreneurs, and other content creators: storytellers who captured the music of their lives in relatable but profound prose. Following their example, I translated my own life into words. I wrote vivid descriptions of scenery and seasonal changes, books I read, conferences I went to, meditations from Scripture, weaving them all into a few themes that culminated at the end of each blog post. My year in Scotland yielded a lot of fruitful experiences I could glamorize: gorgeous hikes in the countryside, fascinating lectures and reading assignments, and plenty of academic research to give credibility and substance to my musings on life, literature, and faith.

The years since returning to America, however, have not been as easy to write about. I’ve gone through a lot of change, including a few moves. Many of the mini-seasons in this long season have not been easy to write about — not for particularly interesting reasons, but because they included plenty of isolation, boredom, and loneliness, which don’t make for great writing material.

For the past few months, reflecting on my original goals and life since graduate school, I’ve been wondering: how much is it healthy, good, or noble to be vulnerable on the internet? This question multiplies into more:

  • How do you know when to share a personal story and when to keep it for your inner circle?
  • How long should you wait to write about an experience?
  • How do you respect others’ privacy when you share stories in which they’ve participated?
  • How many details should you share about a painful or difficult experience?
  • Should you write about unresolved conflict or past hurts? If so, how?
  • How hard should you try to end your personal story, especially a difficult one, on a certain emotional note – especially if you’re not sure that chapter of your life is finished?

Recently, I began pondering the question of Internet/public vulnerability in general after attending a conference in which a successful author, blogger, and podcast guest gave the keynote talk. He shared some deeply personal stories as part of his message: horrifying family tragedies, personal doubt, career struggles, unexpected triumphs, and new directions he’s taken. I’ve heard enough speakers by now to recognize some of the techniques he used, such as careful repetition, including concrete detail, and framing the whole talk with a quest structure. I’ve sat in lectures and talks with speakers who moved the audience to murmurs of awe, even to tears. Unfortunately, this one did not. Something about the speaker’s attitude, the personal details he revealed and concealed, the vaguely spiritual but self-centered ethic he preached, and the crescendo of his talk left me feeling emotionally manipulated — and awkwardly sitting during the applause as many of those around me rose to a standing ovation. I felt that the speaker was using grief and pain from his past to paint himself as both a victim and a victor and tell me how to run my life.

While this speaker was talking to a live audience, not on the Internet, his talk pushed me to a preliminary conclusion. How vulnerable should you be? is a wisdom issue, not a yes/no or fill-in-the-blank question. I walked away convinced that yes, there are good reasons and good ways to do so as well as bad ones. But how do you discern the right reasons and the right ways to share your story?

It’s as difficult a question as the one that haunted me in the post-college years: how do you live a good life? How should an artist use the raw material of her life, especially intimate things like family memories and struggles, in her art? Or should she do so at all?

Vulnerability and Influencer culture

On the internet, on social media, vulnerability is powerful. Someone who can share intimate, specific details of their days, families, work, hobbies, emotions, struggles, trauma, and celebrations can draw a following. I know of influencers who I deeply respect and have taught me wonderful things, but I’m becoming uncomfortable with how vulnerability equals money in the transaction of paid platforms, book deals, and commission sales.

Of course, people who work hard to create beautiful and useful things should be paid for their work. But I am getting concerned about a particular pattern: someone shares intimate details about their life consistently enough that their followers feel like they are personal friends – and, also, students and disciples. An influencer can become a personality who coaches followers on any topic: faith, mental health, life goals, relationship difficulties. One influencer I used to follow on Instagram went from giving life-advice and career coaching to selling a product by commission. She introduced a major world problem and talked extensively about it, then encouraged her followers that that product was a solution.

I know a few influencers who do a great job of cultivating real relationships in the online communities they’ve set up, and encouraging those followers to build real relationships with each other. My concern is when the relationship remains one-sided, digital, and transactional: the influencer offers vulnerable life details, and the follower reciprocates with likes, shares, attention, promotion, and money. Vulnerability sells.

Vulnerability, authenticity, truth: entering other territories

That keynote speech at the conference was just one thing that triggered this question in my mind. Another catalyst was the brief glance I took of a book of publishing advice for nonfiction writers. The book advised writers to be wholly “vulnerable” with their stories: write in blunt detail about humiliations, failures, scars, traumatic experiences, and deepest secrets. The book is a bestseller, and the author is right. Readers love intimate details, especially when they can get them without sharing their own secrets. But that advice makes my introverted self want to head for the hills.

I’m a hypocrite in this area. I love it when other writers share their intimate stories so I can read them from the comfort of anonymity. I crave the juicy details of their romances, either breakups and happy endings; parenting anecdotes; college tales; childhood memories; vacation stories; secrets; and I love not having to share any of mine in return. But vulnerability creates the illusion of friendship and intimacy without the full reality, and I’m afraid it just feeds the loneliness of our culture.

How vulnerable should you be on the internet? After all this thought, I finally looked up the definition. According to Merriam Webster, to be “vulnerable” is to be “capable of being physically or emotionally wounded,” or “open to attack or damage : assailable.” Ouch. But it is true. Sharing childhood memories, family stories, thoughts, and dreams on the Internet does leave you open to attack: mockery, scorn, criticism, and getting cancelled.

So why share your story at all?

I think back to some of the personal essays that have touched me deeply:

  • E.B. White’s “Ring of Time” and “Once More to the Lake” from his essay collection — achingly beautiful reflections of memory, time, and immortality, grounded in rich detail
  • Lanier Ivester’s “Seeds of Love” — an exquisite mingling of personal loss and eternal hope
  • Jennifer Trafton’s “This is For All the Lonely Writers” — a very relatable, exquisitely crafted meditation on loneliness, creativity, and community
  • Lancia Smith’s “Yes, Virginia, I Still Believe in Jolly Old Santa Claus” — a thought-provoking, joyfully reverent study of how the Christmas icon figures the tender love of God

In A Discovery of Poetry, Frances Mayes begins by exploring the purpose and meaning of poetry. “All these images [from poems] form a quick glimpse of how those mysterious others behind the glass live their lives. Poems give you the lives of others and then circle in on your own inner world . . . Like play, poetry lets us enter other territories” (xiii-xv, emphasis mine).

Well-written creative nonfiction and personal storytelling does the same, as do fictional stories. They give us a glimpse of another’s life, let us enter their territory. Done well, it’s invitational, relational, encouraging, challenging, comforting, and thought-provoking.

How vulnerable should you be on the internet? How vulnerable should you be in any form of writing? I think now of David, Asaph, Moses, and others pouring out their hearts in the Psalms; Nehemiah penning his cry to the Lord when he heard Jerusalem was in ruins; Paul writing of his past sins and current persecutions to the beloved members of the early church. Yes, for the right reasons and in the right way, opening yourself up to be wounded is a gift to your audience. Not to build a following of people who feed on your life and your advice, but to welcome them into following the Lord, the One of all creation who has the right and the goodness to influence us ultimately.

Some tentative personal resolutions

Public vulnerability is a wisdom issue, something that requires individual reflection and discernment. Done well, it’s a beautiful gift to readers; done poorly, and you really have opened yourself up to be wounded or to wound your readers. As I ponder this, here are a couple of principles I’m forming for my own writing:

  • Let Scripture guide you into making God the center. Use my writing to recognize the work of the Lord – not by slapping a Bible verse or pious-sounding conclusion onto every piece, but trusting that if I pay attention to detail, take the time to ponder an experience, and pray over it, I will find its intersection with eternal truth. I’ve seen this modeled brilliantly by the writers at The Cultivating Project, who weave Biblical insights, hymns, and other art into personal stories. A good artist can turn the telos or purpose of a piece into hope-through-lament, courage-through-darkness, joy-through-sorrow, and faith-through suffering without minimizing how hard life is.
  • Tell family and friends first. This is an old rule I made for myself, and I think I’ve managed to follow it. If I have exciting news in particular, I try to let my closest circles know first, and they get the real scoop on the most interesting details.
  • If it’s a hard subject, pray and wait before sharing. I don’t think I need a waiting period to share a fun hiking story or list of good books I’ve read recently, but if I choose to share something painful or complicated, I want to make sure I have a good reason for doing so.
  • Err on the side of others’ privacy. I never want to burn a relationship by turning a painful or private subject into a piece of content. Any money I might get from a commissioned piece, any number of likes, follows, or shares, is not worth hurting someone I love.

What do you think about vulnerability on the Internet? Where have you seen it modeled well or poorly? And what are some of your favorite examples of personal stories told well?

Lazy Late Summer

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Summer days were just a magazine, a magazine, a magazine . . . 
Cutting grass for gasoline
For gasoline, so I can see ya soon . . .
“Dandelion Wine” by Gregory Alan Isakov

Gregory Alan Isakov is one of the best living poets I know of. His metaphors are rich, sweet delights that summon moods and moments, dreams and memories like spells. In “Dandelion Wine,” he captures the lazy, wistful, sultry days of late summer in that lovely image of dandelion wine – the golden flower-weeds that dot the green grass, the sleepy pleasure of drinking in the sun and the quiet of long days. 

It’s getting towards late summer now. Air that was heavy with humidity is now soft with cool breezes; the oaks bear little clusters of acorns turning from green to brown; dainty Queen Anne’s lace and radiant goldenrod are flowering in the ditches; the whir of cicadas and cooing of mourning doves sounds dreamy and content. After a tumultuous year, I’ve found that returning to things I love like Isakov’s music, T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets, Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia, and the Nancy Drew books is deeply comforting. It has been harder lately to feel that “yearning” that I made the theme of this blog — that deep, sweet longing for the presence of God — but good old stories, songs, and poems stir up the memory of it. Best of all are Psalms like Psalm 34 in its tenderness and Psalm 36 in its joyful wonder; I find the thirsty roots of my soul stretching into those passages.

Psalm 36:7-9 — 
7  How precious is your steadfast love, O God!
The children of mankind take refuge in the shadow of your wings.
8  They feast on the abundance of your house,
and you give them drink from the river of your delights.
9  For with you is the fountain of life;
in your light do we see light.

After spending last summer pouring over fairy tales for the Leaf by Lantern podcast, I decided to mix things up this summer and try to write a historical fiction/mystery set in New England in the 1950s. It’s definitely challenged my research skills. I want to summon the music of the past in minute detail: the use of suntan lotion vs. sunscreen, for example, the swish of circle skirts, the necessity of starching and ironing everything, the shadow of the Korean War, and the use of telegrams/radio/letters for communicating and spreading news. Great historical fiction authors like Eloise Jarvis McGraw and Rosemary Sutcliff managed to capture the smells, tastes, sounds, and textures of long ago in gorgeous detail, and I want to imitate them, but it takes a lot of digging to get there.

Wanderings in Faerie

But I still want some fantasy in my life. I finished Junius Johnson’s “Summer of Fairies” course with a rereading of George MacDonald’s Phantastes – a weird, wonderful song of Romanticism and fairy tale beautified with a Scriptural vision of redemption. We’ve explored the nature and characteristics of Faerie, Fairy Land, Elfland, or whatever others call the fairy world and what makes it fascinating and dangerous. 

One thing that’s surprised me in this course is realizing that the land of Faerie is perilous for the reader as well as the character. In a world where normal rules don’t apply and new, terrifying ones spring up, like “don’t tell anyone your true name” or “don’t eat any of the food or you’ll get stuck here,” you want a loving, wise guide like Tolkien, MacDonald, or Lewis with you. Tolkien, MacDonald, Lewis, and storytellers like them witness to the Lord who is Good Shepherd. He sees every lonely wanderer, every lost soul who gets caught in a trap of their own making, and offers a safe haven of forgiveness. I read the ebook version of Tolkien’s short story “Smith of Wooten Major” with Pauline Baynes’s bewitching illustrations, and that sense of sovereign mercy even in a perilous realm is so beautiful:

But he [the main character, Smith] had business of its own kind in Faery, and he was welcome there; for the star shone bright on his brow, and he was as safe as a mortal can be in that perilous country. The Lesser Evils avoided the star, and from the Greater Evils he was guarded.

“Smith of Wooten Major” by J.R.R. Tolkien

Authors who don’t have that Scriptural view of reality and shepherdly love for their readers can lead you down some dark roads. Faerie is, by nature, inexplicable and unmappable, but heaven’s love and justice are just as sovereign there as everywhere else.  

Saturnine Stories in the Light of Scripture

I’ve thought more about stories that lead their audiences down dark roads from a recent conversation with my dad. He asked me if the newish Marvel show, “Secret Invasion,” featuring an older Nick Fury battling a new threat, was any good. I had tried it out a few months before and didn’t like it. 

“It’s kind of sad,” I explained. “Nick Fury is older and keeps making mistakes, and everyone keeps reminding him that he’s not as strong and smart as when he was young, and some really lovable characters die, and it just feels like all the good times are gone and there’s nothing left. I don’t like those kinds of stories.” 

My dad thought for a moment. “Was it saturnine?” he asked. 

I gaped at him. We’d both read Michael Ward’s Planet Narnia years before; my dad was referencing Ward’s argument that the seven books of Lewis’s series are written in the spirit of the seven medieval planets. Each Narnia book has the tone, atmosphere, and resonance of each planet. It’s too long a thesis to describe here, but Ward argues that The Last Battle is written in the spirit of the planet Saturn: a spirit of decay, loss, old age, and death, good times past. Google “saturnine” and you’ll find various definitions of a person or mood that is cold, gloomy, forbidding, bitter, and sardonic. Ward explains how Lewis’s Christian vision reveals good, redemptive aspects of Saturn (read the book to find out more about that) but a saturnine story without that Scriptural hope is unreasonably depressing. My dad was dead center: “Secret Invasion,” or at least, the first few episodes, is saturnine.1

Remembering Michael Ward’s book reminded me of how much hidden meaning lies in stories. Stories are visions of the world; every word and sound, character portrait, image and plot point has a spiritual dimension. Many of the classics I read in school like John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, Kamala Markandaya’s Nectar in Sieve, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, or John Knowles’s A Separate Peace are exquisitely crafted, but they leave the reader with a tiny fragment of hope at the very most.2 As I reflect on that part of my education, I feel more and more how wrong it was to give students a picture of victimhood without justice and suffering without hope. It would be easy to go to the opposite extreme and celebrate happy stories that have no darkness at all — but that wouldn’t be true to reality, either. The best stories look forward through pain to the God who will right every wrong and “wipe every tear from our eyes” in the New Creation. 

This will be my struggle as a writer: crafting stories that reckon with darkness while witnessing the victory of light, that reflect the redemptive shape of the gospel without “skipping over” the sad parts (as I wish I could skip over the sad parts of life). Scripture will help me in that, reminding me that Jeremiah’s lament is just as real as Nehemiah’s rebuilding of Jerusalem; that David’s sorrow over Absalom was as much a part of his life as his victory over Goliath; that Good Friday was necessary for Easter Sunday; that the New Jerusalem promises healing. In this “magazine” of golden late summer days and earthly peace, I look forward to the peace of the final victory, of drinking from the river of God’s delights forever.


Notes
1  “Secret Invasion” is a Marvel show, and Marvel stories usually work out to a happy ending, so I’m guessing that there is a turning point where things get better. I just didn’t want to sit through all the sad parts.
2 These books are classics for a reason, and I know I’m oversimplifying them by talking about them so briefly. They are extremely well-written and testify to important truths about the world. But all four of these books culminate in a significant death, and I don’t think they echo the gospel’s forgiveness and promise of resurrection. To be fair, my high school also assigned us Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and even Shakespeare’s tragic “Romeo and Juliet,” which do have redemptive hope.

The Second Summer

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My second summer in Tennessee really has felt like paradise: golden hour tickling the dark green, feathery leaves of the honey locust trees; a writer’s retreat centered on the theme of music; dewdrops twinkling in the grass; triumphal teaching on the book of Acts; fireflies gleaming in the sweet, cool air after a thunderstorm; an online course on dragons that is filling my mind with insights and my heart with wonder. 

It is also sweet to be fulfilling the dream of several years, starting a podcast. It is harder than I thought it would be to record my voice and send it out into the world. Hearing my own attempts to balance vocal projection, enthusiasm, calm, and proper enunciation feels like studying my face in a mirror for an uncomfortably long time. It is fun, though, to present my own writing in a new medium, a form that is more embodied and more vulnerable than text on a page. 

The brand-new project is still flittering its frail wings and trying to comprehend gravity, but just launching it has taught me a few things: to not try to edit to perfection (it’s a good way to drive yourself mad); to do things the messy way at first, like Googling “how to put your podcast on Spotify” and cushioning my microphone with pillows; to enjoy the way that a podcast opens fascinating discussions with close family and friends.

In between Scriptural word-studies on darkness and frost, puzzling over texts like Vladimir Propp’s venerable Morphology of the Folktale, rereading The Voyage of the Dawn Treader and The Hobbit, giggling over a P.G. Wodehouse audiobook as I water my plants, and basking in the sun to erase my flip-flop tan, I have been trying to write stories again. After a year of settling in a new place and trying to build a life, somehow, writing is harder rather than easier. It is a perilous, vulnerable, precious thing to try to call a world to life with words; shape believable, complex characters; set a rhythm of exposition, action, and dialogue that summons readers into the waking dream of narrative. 

A sweet and wise writer at the recent writer’s retreat told me that she is trying to write primarily for herself, for joy, first, before worrying about pleasing an audience. I am trying to have the courage to imitate her in that – to refresh my spirit with good, profound, beautiful things, and then use them to sing a new song. 

Leaf by Lantern – Latest Podcast Episodes

Episode 3: The Black Bull of Norroway

I had a lot of fun putting this episode together. The episode examines how a Christian artist could interpret or use the images of the unexpected call, the black bull, the wandering in the wilderness, and the glass hill from this fairy tale. 

Things I forgot or didn’t have room to mention in the episode (these will make more sense if you’ve already listened to it): 

  • I think the image of the black bull, a figure who is mysterious and scary at first but turns out to be good and kind, has some symbolic links to the idea of “holy darkness” that C.S. Lewis explores in his own fairy tale retelling, Till We Have Faces. I may do a podcast episode on that book later.
  • There are so many fascinating images in this tale I didn’t cover: the apple, pear, and plum given to the heroine that contain fabulous jewelry; the strange part of the tale when the sky turns red if the battle goes ill and blue if it goes well; the washing of the blood-stained shirt. I could have gone into themes of communion, provision, prophecy, sanctification, and recognition here – but to avoid making the episode too long or oversaturated with content, I had to focus on my favorite images.
  • In my own version of the tale, the one I read aloud at the beginning, I chose to have the prince say “At last!” when he sees the main character, his true bride. This phrase is an echo of Adam’s exclamation when he first sees Eve.

Episode 4: Maid Maleen with Loren G. Warnemuende

My friend Loren and I talk about her retelling of “Maid Maleen” – a trilogy called “Daughter of Arden.” We talked about the first book, “Exile,” and how Loren chose to interpret the father figure, the princess, the tower, and the garden. I also threw in a question about fancy dresses, since I have come to believe those are a crucial aspect of fairy tale retellings. 

  • You can order a copy of Exile here and Wandering here.
  • See Loren’s website for information more about her and her work.