Your wish has been granted! Mothers of Enchantment: New Tales of Fairy Godmothers is out in ebook and paperback today, April 19, 2022. These stories flip traditional fairy tales on their heads to show the story from the point of view of the fairy godmother herself. (Or, the fairy godfather himself.) Some are set in the modern day, like "Modern Magic" by Carter Lappin which features a Starbucks-drinking Basic Godmother helping a young woman impress at her high school reunion; some are set in a historical period, like "The Venetian Glass Girl" by Abi Marie Palmer which takes us to the moon-drenched canals of nineteenth-century Venice. Still others mix a way-back setting with a modern sensibility, like "My Last Curse" by Elise Forier Edie, in which the fairy godmothers play a centuries-long game to fight the fairy godfathers.

Click here to listen to some of the authors read an excerpt from their stories, and look below to find a link to your favorite online bookseller. You can always request a copy through your local independent bookstore, or request that your library order a copy!

We remember her best as the generous fairy who dresses Cinderella and handles transportation while she’s at it. But that’s just the most famous fairy godmother’s tale. With a little imagination, you’ll find that fairy godmothers and godfathers appear in many varied forms. The authors in this anthology have crafted new tales that re-imagine the fairy godmother and her role.
 
A young fairy grapples with imposter syndrome as she takes up her new appointment as godmother. Immortal sisters bestow blessings and curses on princesses as a way to battle the patriarchal fairy godfathers. A struggling artist receives a godmother’s help to impress at her high school reunion. Sparing the life of a moth leads to magical help from an unexpected protector.
 
Retellings of Pinocchio, Rumpelstiltskin, Beauty and the Beast, and The Frog Prince show the magic of these stories in a whole new light. Infused with modern sensibilities but honoring the tradition of fairy tales, these dozen stories will enchant and inspire you.

Mothers of Enchantment: New Tales of Fairy Godmothers will be available in ebook and paperback April 19, 2022! Pre-order at the links below, and add to your Goodreads shelf here.

Table of Contents

“Wishes to Heaven” by Michelle Tang
“A Story of Soil and Stardust” by Kelly Jarvis
“Real Boy” by Marshall J. Moore
“Returning the Favor” by Lynden Wade
“My Last Curse” by Elise Forier Edie
“Face in the Mirror” by Sonni de Soto
“Forgetful Frost” by Vivica Reeves
“Modern Magic” by Carter Lappin
“In the Name of Gold” by Claire Noelle Thomas
“Of Wishes and Fairies” by Maxine Churchman
“Flick: The Fairy Godmother” by Kim Malinowski
“The Venetian Glass Girl” by Abi Marie Palmer

What do you get when you take the high tech/low life settings of cyberpunk and sprinkle them with the magic and possibilities of fairy tales? Trolls under teleportation bridges, masquerades held in virtual reality, princely avatars, giants and dwarves alongside hackers and androids. From retellings of traditional tales such as Rumpelstiltskin, in which a young woman is tasked with writing code instead of spinning gold, to original tales like the changeling-inspired story of a formless machine intelligence that hijacks human bodies, these cyberpunk fairy tales form a unique collection that is sure to satisfy connoisseurs of both genres.

Original stories from Thomas Badlan, Suzanne Church, Beth Goder, Sarah Van Goethem, Nicola Kapron, V.F. LeSann, Angus McIntyre, Wendy Nikel, Ana Sun, Michael Teasdale, Alena Van Arendonk and Laura VanArendonk Baugh.

Trenchcoats, Towers, and Trolls: Cyberpunk Fairy Tales is out now in ebook and paperback!

We've slowed down our publications significantly, releasing only two books each in 2020 and 2021, and I was thrilled to see that all four of those titles appeared on this ​year's bestseller list! Also making an appearance on the list for the first time ever is the very first book we ever published: THE HAUNTED HOUSEWIVES OF ALLISTER, ALABAMA by Susan Abel Sullivan. We hosted an author interview and a sale for this book in August, which turned out to be only a month before the author's sudden passing. I'm glad we had the opportunity to shine some light on her work before she was gone, and I wish she were here to celebrate her place on this list. Check out our interview with Susan Abel Sullivan here.

We are proud to present this year's World Weaver Press Pushcart Prize nominations!

WWP published two anthologies in 2021, and have selected three stories from each. Scroll down to see the nominees, and reach an excerpt from the stories.

Congratulations to the authors, and best of luck in the final selection! For more on the Pushcart Prize, see their website here: ​www.pushcartprize.com/

First up, the three stories from Clockwork, Curses, and Coal: Steampunk and Gaslamp Fairy Tales, edited by Rhonda Parrish.

​The girls arrive in London at the dirigible docks or train station or (a lucky few) by direct carriage within the same week, a rather dreary one in April. Each makes her way to the designated hotel, where she is greeted at the door by a butler and staff hired to see to her every need and by the hotel matron hired to watch her every move.

Inside the grand lobby is a concentration of the modern splendors of the glorious Age of Artifice. Textiles, art, mechanized furniture of the highest quality, and cabinets full of exotic curiosities suffuse the space with their unusual patterns, bright colors, and symphony of clicks and whirs. Each girl passes by the objects with either awed or assessing glances, following the butler toward her room.
​
The house’s tasteful luxury is tipped over the edge into ostentation once the full chattering mass of young women—all wealthy, most socialites, some noble, a handful royal, and not a few the daughters of newly-great men of artifice—gathers in the ballroom on the day the contest is set to begin.

“I am implying only that something miraculous happened inside my child’s soul that night. It’s not something I built. But it’s not something of the Creator, either. It’s something in between; something straight from the beauty of their mind.”

There was a long pause. Then Marjorie said, “Is it okay if I think of them as two people?”

“No,” whispered Henrik.

“Yes,” said Gerta, quirking her metal jaw into a smirk.

“Mother wouldn’t have approved,” he said. “Of her or Papa’s intentions for her.”

“You mean as a new body for Mother’s dead soul?” Gerta rolled her eyes. “It didn’t work the last sixteen times, and it won’t work this one. We’ve nothing to worry about.”
​
“Who’s worrying?” he said softly. “I’m just wondering what she’d think of being another of Papa’s experiments.”

The train chugs into Aldermoor during the night. Jane Windlass stands at her window, watching, a spectre in her white nightgown, her warm fingertips making ovals on the cold glass. She heard the steam trumpet moments before, like always. Every night, trains trundle in and out of Aldermoor, but tonight is different. Jane’s eyes snapped open, her limbs tensed, rigid. She’s been waiting all this time. Waiting and waiting and waiting. For days and weeks and months and years.
How long has it been since she last saw them? The thought weaves a thread of guilt just under her ribs, plucking at her heart. She gave up counting. At some point she stopped totalling the days and resumed her life.

Without them.

Without her sisters.

But now, finally, the time has come. The circus has arrived and Jane can just make out their forms through the smog-lined streets. There, in the distance, shadows deboarding. Mulling on the platform, clutching at bags, struggling under the weight of trunks.
​
The peculiars.

And next, our nominations from Multispecies Cities: Solarpunk Urban Futures, edited by Christoph Rupprecht, Deborah Cleland, Norie Tamura, Rajat Chaudhuri, and Sarena Ulibarri.

That evening, at sunset, as I sat where my bed would later be unfurled, the sky was brighter, as if colours that were unseen behind the day’s blazing blue pushed through the azure membrane to make everything splendid. I sang to the sky again, again in tunes unfamiliar until the moment it tumbled out of me as a sudden gurgling stream.
 
That’s when it happened. The sky sang back to me.

A star, five-pointed, like the marvels we spoke about
during Face-to-Face Communication Class,
appeared in the sky’s dome and sang to me. I don’t know exactly what it sang for it sang in star language, pulsing in crimson and pale yellow, pulsing, pulsing, but not fading away. We sang a duet, we sang a long long time, singing and singing back as if we were rocking a cradle of melodies.

Mishael was in-between, like me: not a tourist, not yet a local. She wasn’t one of the surfers that haunted the beaches, either; she was a normal person with an apartment and a job. Better than normal, really. She didn’t work in the tourist trade, which felt rare and special to me after a couple of months in Oahu’s service industry, but had a solid job as an electrician. Plus, she did a little Parkour in her spare time, and had the physique to match: her body had a compact, graceful strength that put me in mind of both a wrestler and an acrobat.

I had started to hope that somehow, on this island of tourists, surfers, and locals who saw me as a transient, I might have found someone just for me.

Then, in the midst of a conversation about Hawai‘i’s slumbering volcanoes, Mauna Kea’s observatory had come up. And these words had come out of her mouth:
​
“You know the stars are fake, right?”

A currawong swooped from the rafters, charcoal wings slicing through the sunlight. Rhys sidestepped a myopic kiwi and stumbled over a pangolin as he entered the warehouse.

“Watch your step,” I said belatedly.

“Why is that kiwi out in daylight?”

“He’s an insomniac.”

All around us, fur rippled, feathers ruffled and scales glimmered in a glorious array of colours, although on closer inspection, some of the creatures bore a silvery sheen.

“My goodness,” said Rhys, “that’s not a Komodo dragon, is it?”
​
“No, giant salamander.” I wrestled the grinning amphibian back into the 3D scanner and flicked the switch to ‘motion capture’. At the edge of an artificial pond, a pair of red-crowned cranes engaged in a mesmerising mirror-dance, although only one of the cranes glimmered faintly silver.

​What tends to come first for you when you start to write: character, plot, an image, something else?

It actually varies from story to story. For some books, I come up with a brilliant (to me, at least!) character and just have to think of a way to fit them into the story. Sometimes I get a scene in my head, almost like an action sequence from a movie, and I try to figure out a way to move the plot so it can incorporate the scene. This doesn't always work, so I have a few, sadly, cut scenes in my folders. I think it's important to be flexible, as a writer. Characters change and evolve. Sometimes they go in directions you weren't expecting, so new ideas are always welcome.

What else have you published recently?

My most recent publication was a novella called "Traces" over at Beneath Ceaseless Skies, about a man who can find anything, who has, ironically, lost his memories. I wanted to write something with a Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell vibe, and hopefully came at least a little close. I also almost always have an essay or editor's note up at The Bethlehem Writers Roundtable.  

Without spoilers, what is your favorite scene in one of your books?
 
One of my favorite scenes to ever write is in the short story “The Accidental Poet” in my short story collection Cursed: Wickedly Fun Stories which is, coincidentally, the first book World Weaver Press published back in 2011. Can’t believe it’s been ten years!
 
In “The Accidental Poet” our brave hero, high school student Bernie Lludd, gets his dream girl to join his unicycle act for the school talent show. She twirls her batons while sitting on his shoulders as he zooms around the gym on a unicycle.  But when the unicycle hits a wet spot on the floor, Bernie and his girl take a hard tumble to the thunderous laughter of the student body. 
 
This scene was fun to write because it’s based on a real event that happened to my little sister when we were in high school. She was the majorette twirling batons perched on her boyfriend’s shoulders as he juggled glow-in-the-dark tennis balls while riding a unicycle in the gym to Steve Wynwood’s “While You See a Chance You Take It” with the lights dimmed. And yes, the unicycle hit a wet spot and they both fell. My sister had the breath knocked out of her, but other than dying of embarrassment, she recovered just fine. Truly, real life is stranger and often more bizarre than fiction.
 
Which of your characters would you most like to meet in real life, and where would the two of you hang out?
 
Georgia Tidwell, Cleo Tidwell’s sixty-something, Elvis lovin’ mother-in-law. Wherever Georgia goes, fun is sure to follow!  Whether it’s making a blow torch from a can of Aqua Net hairspray or being up for an impromptu road trip to Graceland in a pink Cadillac, Georgia is my dream mother-in-law: fun, supportive, and game for anything.

What do you get when you take the high tech/low life settings of cyberpunk and sprinkle them with the magic and possibilities of fairy tales? Trolls under teleportation bridges, masquerades held in virtual reality, princely avatars, giants and dwarves alongside hackers and androids. From retellings of traditional tales such as Rumpelstiltskin, in which a young woman is tasked with writing code instead of spinning gold, to original tales like the changeling-inspired story of a formless machine intelligence that hijacks human bodies, these cyberpunk fairy tales form a unique collection that is sure to satisfy connoisseurs of both genres.

Trenchcoats, Towers, and Trolls: Cyberpunk Fairy Tales will be out in ebook and paperback January 11, 2022. Add it to your Goodreads shelf now, and check back soon for opportunities to pre-order your copy. Want to win an advance review copy? Check out the World Weaver Press Twitter account for a chance to win.

Table of Contents

"Introduction" by Rhonda Parrish
​"A Beautiful Nightmare" by Sarah Van Goethem
"Firewalls and Firewort" by Wendy Nikel
"The Rabbit in the Moon" by Ana Sun
"Stiltskin" by Michael Teasdale
"Three" by Nicola Kapron
"Cumulus" by Thomas Badlan
"Drift-Skip" by Suzanne Church
"Make Your Own Happily Ever After" by Beth Goder
"***********SK.IN" by Alena Van Arendonk
"C4T & MOU5E" by V.F. LeSann
"In the Belly of the Whale" by Angus McIntyre
"Neon Green in D Minor" by Laura VanArendonk Baugh

Sunday, August 1st at noon Mountain Time, please join us for a discussion about the role of fairy tales in modern fiction, featuring authors Charlotte Honigman, Lissa Sloan, Reese Hogan, and Wendy Nikel, all of whom have published fairy tale-inspired stories in World Weaver Press anthologies. This virtual event will be part of Mythcon 51, happening all weekend. A $20 membership fee gets you access to three tracks of fantastic discussions from both scholars and authors.

Charlotte Honigman (she/her) is a history teacher, wife, mom, and rabbinic school dropout, as well as a writer who weaves Jewish myth and history into fantasy and science fiction. As C.G. Griffin, she is the author of Last Mass, a mystery novel set in Renaissance Florence. Her Baba Yaga retelling, “The Partisan and the Witch” was published in Skull and Pestle: New Tales of Baba Yaga (World Weaver Press, 2019), and won the Washington Science Fiction Association Small Press Award.

Lissa Sloan’s (she/her) poems and short stories are published in Enchanted Conversation, Krampusnacht: Twelve Nights of Krampus, Frozen Fairy Tales, and Skull and Pestle: New Tales of Baba Yaga. “Death in Winter,” Lissa’s contribution to Frozen Fairy Tales, was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. 

Reese Hogan (they/he) is a nonbinary science fiction author from New Mexico. They have published three novels, and the latest, Shrouded Loyalties from Angry Robot, was a Best SFF of August 2019 pick by both Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Their Hansel and Gretel retelling, “The Balance of Memory,” was published in Clockwork, Curses, and Coal: Steampunk and Gaslamp Fairy Tales (World Weaver Press, 2021).

Wendy Nikel (she/her) is a speculative fiction author with a degree in elementary education, a fondness for road trips, and a terrible habit of forgetting where she's left her cup of tea. Her fairy tale retellings include “Things Forgotten on the Cliffs of Avevig” in Grimm, Grit, and Gasoline: Dieselpunk and Decopunk Fairy Tales (World Weaver Press, 2019) and “Blood and Clockwork” in Clockwork, Curses, and Coal: Steampunk and Gaslamp Fairy Tales (World Weaver Press, 2021).

Guest Blog by Andrew Dana Hudson

​It’s very clear—from science, from anecdotes, from viral videos on the Internet—that humans share this planet with alien intelligences. I don’t speak of skrulls or reptoids, of course, but of dogs, dolphins, apes, whales, corvids, cats and elephants. And countless others, animals with their own subjective inner lives, with opinions, desires, emotions and even language.
 
And yet, where is the highly funded, intergovernmental, Arrival-esque research effort to establish meaningful communication with these terrestrial alien minds? Plenty of science is done on animal communication, but nothing on the scale of what’s depicted in blockbuster movies and sci-fi novels as a natural response to encountering beings from outer space. We giddy at the thought of universal translators—they’re in everything from Star Trek to Marvel movies to Barbarella—but we seem disinterested in applying such a device to the non-humans already on our planet.
 
I don’t want to dwell on why this is—our speciesism, our anthropocentrism, the artificial hierarchies we create to set ourselves apart from other kinds of minds—but rather propose a sci-fi “what-if.” What if our priorities were different? What if, instead of using Big Data to optimize social media ads, we used that enormous computational power to interpret the sounds, signs, and body language of animals? What if, instead of automating weapons of war, DARPA and similar used artificial intelligence to create tools of connection? What if our schools taught us how to listen—with our ears, eyes, nose and touch—to beings who don’t look like us but nonetheless likely have something interesting to say?
 
Some of this hypothetical backgrounds my story “The Mammoth Steps.” In it, translation technology and norms of interspecies communication make possible a deep friendship between a boy, Kaskil, and a de-extincted mammoth, Roomba. More than that, they create a world in which Roomba is not a pet, not confined or controlled or enslaved, but rather has the agency to pursue his own dreams and desires. He, with Kaskil’s help, journeys across the human world, and he is mostly left alone, allowed to live his own life, go his own way. It is merely science fictional flare to tell this story with a mammoth, rather than a chimp or a beluga or an African elephant.
 
In our “what-if” scenario, it is not hard to imagine that interspecies communication tech doesn’t just empower humans, but empowers non-humans as well. Imagine visiting a city where everyone speaks a foreign language. You see things that interest you—museums and shops and public transit and restaurants—but you can’t express that interest to the locals, can’t even get them to let you in the buildings. But with our translator, all that is changed! Is it so hard to imagine that with real communication, rather than reward-and-punishment training under regimes of animal captivity and slavery, some non-humans could similarly become flourishing parts of our civilization, perhaps our cities? Could even, with the right technological assistance, do jobs, get paid, rent apartments, participate in the economy, enjoy leisure, express opinions, create art?
 
We don’t know what’s really possible here. We lack the civilizational priorities to find out. We don’t know how much of any consciousness is instinctive and how much is learned, relational, materially constructed. We can train elephants to paint, and chuckle at their little drawings, feel impressed that an animal could do this, while also feeling safe in knowing that it will never compare to great human art. But we have never let an elephant go to art school, never created the material and social conditions for elephant art to unfold over generations.
 
In my “Mammoth Steps” what-if of translation apps, visual talking boards, and touchscreen interface balls, humans and animals have started to explore what might be possible. Working together to care for the environment? Yes. Non-human freedom of movement across a whole continent? Within reason. Clothes and healthcare to bring comfort to those with different bodies? Worth trying. Shared politics, economics, communities? Contentious, but we’ll never know until we try.

​Andrew Dana Hudson’s fiction has appeared in Lightspeed Magazine, Vice Terraform, Slate Future Tense, Grist, MIT Technology Review, and more. His work won the 2016 Everything Change Climate Fiction Contest and was runner-up in the 2017 Kaleidoscope Writing the Future Contest. He has a master’s degree in sustainability from Arizona State University and is a fellow at the ASU Center for Science and the Imagination. He is a member of the cursed 2020/2021 class of the Clarion Workshop. He lives in Tempe, Arizona and can be found online at www.andrewdanahudson.com and on Twitter at @andrewdhudson.