We made a whole course on the folklore of the tarot (!!)

Me & The Moon: The Folklore of Tarot is a course that combines tarot history, art, reflection, folk narrative, and intuition as a method to interpret your own story, and yourself, with confidence and insight.

Most importantly, you’ll learn to use the cards as a tool to rediscover your voice, identify your patterns, and embrace your power.

What’s needed: a true sense of curiosity, an itch for creativity, receptiveness to historical and folkloric scholarship, and willingness to flex your intuition and trust your gut.

Whether you’re a seasoned reader or brand-new to tarot, you’ll strengthen your connection to the cards through clear-eyed cultural analysis, learn new strategies that rely on intuitive folk narrative, and gain confidence and flexibility in your ability to read the stories within the tarot.

Each week of the course will feature a deep dive into one of these topics:

The History of Folklore and Tarot

Tarot Symbols

Divination and Personal Reflection

Tarot and Literature

By the end, you’ll be reading tarot like a folklorist – with scholarship to uplift you, familiar narratives to guide you, and intuition to light your way.

We’ll have a lot more to say about Me & The Moon over the next couple of weeks (be sure to get on our mailing list if you want to hear more!) Think: “How woo is this going to be?” “How woo are Sara and Brittany, actually??!” “How did this course even happen?” “What’s the juiciest bit of lore we’ve uncovered in our tarot research so far?”

For now, you can check out the full sales page here. Early bird pricing (the heftiest discount we’ve ever done for a new live course, $60 off!) ends on Friday at midnight ET!

The post Me & The Moon: The Folk is Open for Enrollment!! appeared first on The Carterhaugh School of Folklore and the Fantastic.

We made you something. Honestly, this might be the most-requested thing we’ve ever created. 

It’s completely free, super folklore-y, and as mystical as we get.

Ready to pull a card?

Reveal the Past. Inspire the Present. Change the Future.

We’d like to cordially invite you to….

“The Queen of Wands” where you’ll reveal the story within your tarot through the lens of folklore and the fairy tale.

In a nutshell, “The Queen of Wands” is a FREE talk for the folklore-obsessed and the tarot-curious who want to rediscover their voice, identify their patterns, and embrace their power.

It’s going down on April 28th at 7PM ET. And, yes, there will be a replay!

Here’s our pitch:

Look, we’re not here to tell you the future. (We’re folklorists, not literal Magicians.) But we do know there’s still magic in the world. There’s magic in you and in the stories you tell yourself.

And there’s magic in learning to understand yourself, your choices, and your own power through a deck of cards.

It’s so painfully easy to lose your intuition, your sense of self, your connection to something deeper (who you are and what you want) when you’re just trying to get through the week.

The truth is, it’s just as easy to take the first small step back toward yourself and a version of your story that you love. To sit down, warm your deck between your fingers, and reveal a tale and a truth you’ve been too busy – or too overwhelmed – to really hear.

Tarot isn’t a magic eight ball or a winning lottery ticket, but it can help you create moments of clarity and beauty. At its best, it’s a way to carve out space for yourself – to reflect, to reconnect, to remember that you already hold more wisdom than you think you do.

Tarot isn’t about predicting your future – it’s about tapping into your own sense of story and your intuition. 

It’s about rediscovering your voice, your patterns, your power. 

It’s about becoming the Queen/ Knight/ hoarder of Cups or Swords that you’re meant to be.

You already have so many of the tools you need…

Let us show you how to read the tarot like a folklorist.

You can sign up to join us live (or catch the replay) here!!

The post FREE Queen of Wands Tarot and Folklore Workshop! appeared first on The Carterhaugh School of Folklore and the Fantastic.

Here’s a list of all the events and publications that we can link you to in the coming weeks.

Events

April 16 at 7:00 PM ET

Book Club – Join us on April 16th at 7PM ET to discuss Heather Fawcett’s Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries! Yes, we’re finally reading this delightful book about a very practical folklorist (shout out to prior book club pick, Emily Tesh’s Silver in the Wood!) doing fieldwork on actual fairies.

Here’s the description: “Cambridge professor Emily Wilde is good at many things: She is the foremost expert on the study of faeries. She is a genius scholar and a meticulous researcher who is writing the world’s first encyclopaedia of faerie lore. But Emily Wilde is not good at people. She could never make small talk at a party—or even get invited to one. And she prefers the company of her books, her dog, Shadow, and the Fair Folk to other people. So when she arrives in the hardscrabble village of Hrafnsvik, Emily has no intention of befriending the gruff townsfolk. Nor does she care to spend time with another new arrival: her dashing and insufferably handsome academic rival Wendell Bambleby, who manages to charm the townsfolk, muddle Emily’s research, and utterly confound and frustrate her. But as Emily gets closer and closer to uncovering the secrets of the Hidden Ones—the most elusive of all faeries—lurking in the shadowy forest outside the town, she also finds herself on the trail of another mystery: Who is Wendell Bambleby, and what does he really want? To find the answer, she’ll have to unlock the greatest mystery of all—her own heart.”

How could we not love a book where the protagonist is making an encyclopedia of fairies?? ;).

Here are some reviews!

“The world-building here is exquisite . . . and the characters are just as textured and richly drawn. This is the kind of forlorn, folkloric fantasy that remembers the old, blood-ribboned source material about sacrifices and stolen children, but adds a modern gloss.” – The New York Times Book Review

“A darkly gorgeous fantasy that sparkles with snow and magic.” – Sangu Mandanna, author of The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches (another former book club pick!)

“The full cast of characters, well-developed faerie lore, and pervasive sense of cold add depth to the delightful proceedings, which include scholarship, yes, but also danger and a hint of romance.” – Booklist (starred review)

If you would like to join future book clubs, make sure you’re on the $7+ tier on our Patreon for April!  

April 22 at 7:00 PM ET

Fairy Tale Salon – Here is the info for our April Fairy-Tale Salon.

Prompt: Spring Renewal

Quest: Spring is officially in bloom, the plants are coming back to life, and we’re thinking a lot about renewal. Sometimes what you need isn’t to start something completely new, but instead to breathe new life into something you already love. For this salon, we’d love to talk about the things that you’re renewing, reinvigorating, and revitalizing. Maybe you’re just getting back into reading poetry, or you’ve vowed to nudge a little life back into your neglected vegetable garden. Maybe you want to reconnect with an old friend! Tell us what you’re doing to bring the energy of spring renewal into your life this month.

If you would like to join us, make sure that you’re on the Salonnières tier or higher on our Patreon for April!

Current Courses Available

The Magic of Shakespeare UNABRIDGED ($427)-Doors close April 10 at midnight ET- Once upon a time, a princess displeased her tyrannical father and was banished from their kingdom.

Once upon a time, a tiff between fairies spilled into the human world, catching up a bunch of unsuspecting mortals in their mischief and magic. 

Once upon a time, three witches made a prophecy and threw Scotland into war.

Once upon a time, a man named William Shakespeare wrote dozens of plays that changed the world. He wasn’t a prince or an aristocrat of any kind – he was the son of a glover. He read books and newspapers, listened to the stories of people he met, and distilled them into tales of shipwrecks, falling kingdoms, and romance.

And now we’re inviting you into his world of fairy tales, ghosts, and strange enchantments, whether you’re a long-established Shakespeare nerd or you’re a little Shakespeare-curious.

An expansive and enchanting exploration of Shakespeare’s plays through the lens of folklore. You’ll experience impeccable scholarship, sparkling adaptations, fairies and folktales, and Gothic ghosties.

But most importantly, you’ll learn the folkloric keys that unlock the plays so that you can understand and enjoy them as you never have before.

When you study Shakespeare through folklore, the puzzle pieces snap into place – we know from personal experience how dazzling and immensely satisfying it feels!

In this course, we bring Shakespeare down to earth, showing you it’s for you, and then fling it up into the stars so you can see all the folklore and magic that weave the plays together. We’ll show you why the plays mattered then and also why they matter now.

What’s Inside:

The Magic of Shakespeare UNABRIDGED is the biggest version of this course we’ve ever run. The core lectures, seminars, and bonus talks are self-study and can be done at your own pace. And we’ll have two live community events for questions, connection, and scholarly glee.

Each week of the course will feature a deep dive into one of these five topics:

• Shakespeare & the Folkloric Lens
• Fairies
• Fairy Tales
• Witches and Ghosts
• Gender

Click here to grab it!

Find Your Fairy Tale Mini-Course ($17) – Find Your Fairy Tale is a bite-sized mini course made to help you connect genuinely with the world of fairy tales and tap into the personal stories that underpin your life – so that you can harness their power or even start to change them. We guarantee academic excellence, dedication to whimsy, and an avenue right into a real sense of everyday enchantment. 

Some people swear by their Enneagram (we’re both 3s) or their Zodiac sign (*waves in Virgo and Scorpio*). We’re all about fairy tales and the insights they reveal.

Click here to grab it!

Press

We were interviewed by Lydia for her Flirting with Life podcast! We talked about fairytales as cultural scripts, practical ways to have an enchanted life, and flirting with something as a practice, and more. Listen to it here! 

We were interviewed on Kelly Jarvis’ blog about Fairylore! Check out our interview on friendship, Carterhaugh’s origin story, Fairylore, and more! Listen to it here!

We were interviewed on Deborah Zehna-Adams’ Substack about writing and Fairylore! Listen to it here! 

Publications

OUR BOOK, FAIRYLORE, IS AVAILABLE TO ORDER!!!

Here’s the official description from our publisher, Sterling Ethos @ Hachette:

“A gorgeously illustrated guide to the fae, filled with intriguing and well-researched explorations of folklore from around the world.

In Ireland, the sinister leannán sídhe suck the life from artists and poets in exchange for muse-like inspiration. In Japan, the elusive zashiki-warashi bestow prosperity on the human families whose homes they share. From the dvorovoi of Russia to the Brazilian curupira, Malaysia’s orang bunian to English brownies, and the moksin tongbŏp of Korea, the world is full of magical creatures who assist, haunt, and dazzle humankind.

This illustrated compendium written by expert folklorists invites us to enter the realm of the fairy folk. Sections dedicated to fairies of the home, nature, romance, and more emphasize what fairies do and what they mean to people around the world. Each chapter illustrates a different way of seeing fairies—a way they’ve been used to explain our world and ourselves.

This is a fascinating reference for anyone who has ever been enchanted by fairies—or would like to be.”

Kelly Jarvis wrote a wonderful review of our new book, Fairylore, in The Fairy Tale Magazine! “Fairylore: A Compendium of the Fae Folk is a necessary book for all those who seek the rare blend of intellectual contemplation and fairy enchantment that Dr. Sara Cleto and Dr. Brittany Warman provide. It is both a valuable academic resource and a work of art that I will cherish and return to often as I continue to explore the fairy magic that beckons from ‘betwixt and between.’” Check out their review of Fairylore and order our book here!

The post The April 2026 Carterhaugh Events Roundup appeared first on The Carterhaugh School of Folklore and the Fantastic.

(Did you know there’s a tale from Cheyenne Native American mythology in which a beaver chewing through a pole ushers in the end of the world? NOW YOU DO.)

(The above was not an official tidbit, just something we can’t stop thinking about.)

ANYWAY. Read on for some odds and ends, including a few ways to meet up with us in person!

1) An absolutely enormous thank you to everyone who joined us for Ravens in the Labyrinth, our first course exclusively on myth in 8 years. Thanks to you, as promised, we were able to donate just shy of $4000, split between the ACLU of Minnesota and the Immigrant Rapid Response Fund. That’s really freaking awesome.

2) Our first book signing event for Fairylore is this coming Saturday (3/14) from 1:00-3:00PM at Virginia Highland Books in Atlanta! If you’re in the area, please come say hi!

3) Want to hang out with us in England? We’re the academic experts on The Great Courses upcoming trip Enchanted England: Folklore, Literature and Landscapes this September, and we helped design the itinerary. King Arthur, Oxford, Shakespeare, a refurbished jail hotel, TERRI WINDLING: this trip has everything. Frankly, our dream is that the trip fills entirely with Carterhaugh people (we know some of you have already signed up!) and we get to talk books and legends and Morgan le Fay with you on the bus and over pints for a week solid. If you’re interested in coming on this trip, we strongly recommend that you sign up by the end of April. Seriously, we hope you come!!

4) Have you read our new book Fairylore yet? Have you asked your friendly local librarian to acquire it/ bought your own copy/ gifted it to your friends and enemies? Yes? Thank you, you are our hero. If you’d like to be our superhero, please leave a quick review on Amazon or wherever you acquired it – it would help us SO MUCH, and we’ll be forever grateful.

And with that, we’re crawling back under our pile of mythology books. Good talk, see you next week!

The post A Few News Tidbits! appeared first on The Carterhaugh School of Folklore and the Fantastic.

Here’s a list of all the events and publications that we can link you to in the coming weeks.

Events

March 12 at 7:00 PM ET

Book Club – Join us on March 12th at 7PM ET to discuss Freya Marske’s fascinating novella, Cinder House! This Gothic “Cinderella” retelling delighted us with its originality, and we can’t wait to talk about it with you!

Here’s the publisher’s description:

“Ella is a haunting.

Murdered at sixteen, her ghost is furiously trapped in her father’s house, invisible to everyone except her stepmother and stepsisters.

Even when she discovers how to untether herself from her prison, there are limits. She cannot be seen or heard by the living people who surround her. Her family must never learn she is able to leave. And at the stroke of every midnight, she finds herself back on the staircase where she died.

Until she forges a wary friendship with a fairy charm-seller, and makes a bargain for three nights of almost-living freedom. Freedom that means she can finally be seen. Danced with. Touched.

You think you know Ella’s story: the ball, the magical shoes, the handsome prince.

You’re halfway right, and all-the-way wrong.”

And here are a few reviews:

“A fairy tale by way of Shirley Jackson… dark and appropriately haunting.”―The New York Times

“Gorgeous, whimsical, romantic, and bittersweet, Cinder House both whisks you away and holds you over a flame. I was bespelled.”―Ava Reid, #1 New York Times bestselling author

“Absolutely delightful. One of the most unusual fairy-tale retellings I’ve seen in a hen’s age. I enjoyed it enormously!”―T. Kingfisher, New York Times bestselling author

“An incredibly unique and shadowy ‘Cinderella’ retelling, full of tenderness and whimsy and featuring a heroine who cannot help but haunt readers.”―Library Journal (starred review)

“This novella impresses from its chilling opening to its inspired, polyamorous take on happily ever after. Lovers of fairy-tale retellings, gothic fantasy, and fierce queer joy will be enchanted.”―Booklist (starred review)

If you would like to join us, make sure you’re on the $7+ tier on our Patreon for March!

March 14 at 1:00 PM–3:00 PM

Fairylore Book Signing at Virginia Highland Books – Join us live and in-person on Saturday, March 14 at 1PM ET for a book signing of our brand-new book, Fairylore: A Compendium of the Fae Folk at Virginia Highland Books in Atlanta, GA!

Get your copies of Fairylore signed, chat about our latest work, and enjoy a fun, relaxed atmosphere.

Don’t miss this chance to connect with us and grab a signed book! We’ll also have special book plates AND bookmarks available (while supplies last!)

Click here to RSVP and get more information!

March 26 at 7:00 PM ET

Fairy Tale Salon – Here is the info for our March Fairy-Tale Salon.

Prompt: The Funniest Thing You’ve Encountered This Month

Quest: This March is seriously in need of some humor, so your salon quest is to share the funniest thing you’ve encountered this month – tell us about a joke that absolutely cracked you up, a cat t-shirt you had to buy immediately because you couldn’t stop giggling about it, the most spot-on perfect meme, a show you saw that you’re still laughing about days later, and/or a book you re-read whenever you need a good chuckle. If it made you laugh recently, we want to hear about it!

If you would like to join us, make sure that you’re on the Salonnières tier or higher on our Patreon for March!

Current Courses Available

Find Your Fairy Tale Mini-Course ($17) – Find Your Fairy Tale is a bite-sized mini course made to help you connect genuinely with the world of fairy tales and tap into the personal stories that underpin your life – so that you can harness their power or even start to change them. We guarantee academic excellence, dedication to whimsy, and an avenue right into a real sense of everyday enchantment. 

Some people swear by their Enneagram (we’re both 3s) or their Zodiac sign (*waves in Virgo and Scorpio*). We’re all about fairy tales and the insights they reveal.

Click here to grab it!

Press

We were interviewed by Lydia for her Flirting with Life podcast! We talked about fairytales as cultural scripts, practical ways to have an enchanted life, and flirting with something as a practice, and more. Listen to it here! 

We were interviewed on Kelly Jarvis’ blog about Fairylore! Check out our interview on friendship, Carterhaugh’s origin story, Fairylore, and more! Listen to it here!

We were interviewed on Deborah Zehna-Adams’ Substack about writing and Fairylore! Listen to it here! 

We had the honor of being interviewed on Drinking Tea with Monsters, a podcast dedicated to “OCD and other, less scary monsters.” We talked about Brittany’s struggles with OCD (and how Sara supports her), about Carterhaugh, and how we work together. We also retold the fairy tale “The Boy Who Went Forth to Learn About Fear” in our own, delightfully irreverent way (did you know it can be applied to neurodivergence? And features a whole ghost bowling scene?), so don’t miss that at the end. Click here to listen!

Publications

OUR BOOK, FAIRYLORE, IS AVAILABLE TO ORDER!!!

Here’s the official description from our publisher, Sterling Ethos @ Hachette:

“A gorgeously illustrated guide to the fae, filled with intriguing and well-researched explorations of folklore from around the world.

In Ireland, the sinister leannán sídhe suck the life from artists and poets in exchange for muse-like inspiration. In Japan, the elusive zashiki-warashi bestow prosperity on the human families whose homes they share. From the dvorovoi of Russia to the Brazilian curupira, Malaysia’s orang bunian to English brownies, and the moksin tongbŏp of Korea, the world is full of magical creatures who assist, haunt, and dazzle humankind.

This illustrated compendium written by expert folklorists invites us to enter the realm of the fairy folk. Sections dedicated to fairies of the home, nature, romance, and more emphasize what fairies do and what they mean to people around the world. Each chapter illustrates a different way of seeing fairies—a way they’ve been used to explain our world and ourselves.

This is a fascinating reference for anyone who has ever been enchanted by fairies—or would like to be.”

Kelly Jarvis wrote a wonderful review of our new book, Fairylore, in The Fairy Tale Magazine! “Fairylore: A Compendium of the Fae Folk is a necessary book for all those who seek the rare blend of intellectual contemplation and fairy enchantment that Dr. Sara Cleto and Dr. Brittany Warman provide. It is both a valuable academic resource and a work of art that I will cherish and return to often as I continue to explore the fairy magic that beckons from ‘betwixt and between.’” Check out their review of Fairylore and order our book here!

The post The March 2026 Carterhaugh Events Roundup appeared first on The Carterhaugh School of Folklore and the Fantastic.

For months, we’ve been rebuilding. Not the courses, not the community, not the way we show up for you…

The visual identity. The aesthetic. The vibe, if you will.

Because, frankly, there’s always been a little bit of tension in what we do. We’re PhDs in Folklore and Literature. Our courses are meticulously researched, carefully structured, academically sound. We’re deadly serious about quality.

However, we do teach fairy tales. Fairylore. The Gothic. Creative writing. We truly believe that these are paths that, if followed, will re-enchant your life. 

Carterhaugh should feel like stepping into another world. A magical, mysterious, peculiar world that just begs to be explored.

Our old brand just never really captured that the way we wanted it to. “Brand” is kind of stretching it to be honest – we were always picking new colors, fonts, images, etc. Sara was always telling Brittany “yes, that LOOKS pretty, but nobody can READ IT.” Brittany was always tinkering with the website using clip art, never quite achieving the elegant but magical witch-faerie academia look she wanted. The logo was beautiful, but it was hard to read and see all the tiny details in it.  

We needed something new that truly honored the duality of what we do.  

So we reached out to the phenomenally talented Tarantula Studio, and we’ve spent the last few months with them totally re-imagining everything. We did a wildly detailed survey for them, where we talked about everything we dreamed Carterhaugh could be, a place where every element was designed to reflect academic authority AND otherworldly whimsy. A brand that felt both credible and like a home to those who feel enchantment in their bones.

And then they made it for us.  

Everything you love is staying the same – the closeness, the scholarship, the emails, the way we show up from the heart. We’re still us, just with an aesthetic that finally looks like what we’ve been building all along. 

We hope you love this new look as much as we do. It’s for you.

The post We’ve Got A New Look! appeared first on The Carterhaugh School of Folklore and the Fantastic.

Now…

It’s once again time for “Curiosities,” an update where we each talk about things that we’re currently reading, listening to, watching, thinking about, and laughing at!

Since we always love writing them (and the responses to them in our inbox indicate that you love reading them!), we have this grand plan in our heads that we’re going to do them quarterly – 4x a year. And yet we seem constitutionally incapable of remembering to write one more than once a year. What is time? Will 2026 be the year we actually do a series of 4? WHO KNOWS?

In the meantime, hi! Curiosities. Let’s go.

Sara:

What I’m Reading: I’m currently reading books number 16 (Paris Daillencourt is About to Crumble by Alexis Hall), 17 (Stone Blind by Natalie Haynes), and 18 (Myths & Legends edited by Jake Jackson) of the year. Paris Daillencourt is a re-read for me (I’ve had a medically stressful couple of weeks and my coping mechanism is Alexis Hall novels), and it’s 1) hilarious, of course, and 2) makes my hair stand on end with its terrifyingly accurate depiction of clinical anxiety. Another particular favorite within the last month was the latest by T. Kingfisher, Snake-Eater, an incredibly strange and excellent story about… an evil roadrunner god? It’s extremely folklore-y and gently sinister, as Kingfisher is wont to do. I refuse to say more because I don’t want to ruin it, but definitely check it out. 

What I’m Listening To: I’m pretty sure the last time we did one of these, Brittany and I wrote about Paris Paloma, so I’m loath to repeat myself. And yet, she has outdone herself, and I’m finding myself listening to “Good Boy” at least once a day lately. (#mood) On a completely different note, late last year I went to an All Time Low concert with Jared (spouse) and Erin (BFF and probably literally All Time Low’s biggest fan), and it was ridiculously fun and delightful. They sound phenomenal live and are extremely charismatic, they threw out some guy who was harassing the people around him in the middle of the show, and they, with much merriment, opened Pokemon cards on stage. What’s not to love? And so now I’m reliving my emo music era and blasting “Time Bomb” and “Dear Maria, Count Me In” at full volume in the car and shower and the kitchen. 10/10. 

What I’m Watching: To the surprise of literally no one, I’ve been on a bit of an anime bender over the last few weeks. (See: coping mechanisms.) I really enjoyed Love Through a Prism, which is about a young artist named Lili who travels from Japan to study painting in London shortly before the outbreak of WWI. I found the voice acting a bit distracting, but the visuals were beautiful, and I’m a sucker for shows about art and about striving towards excellence in your area of expertise. I also appreciated the array of settings – London, the Cotswolds, the Lake District, and Yokohama, among others – and the camaraderie of the art students reminded me so much of grad school. Another sweet one from the last couple of weeks is The Fragrant Flower Blooms with Dignity, which is a fairly straightforward offering from the high school romance genre, but I was charmed by the teenage characters’ emotional intelligence and willingness to talk to each other about their fears, hopes, and feelings. Fragrant Flower is also pretty notable for lots of lovely, non-toxic friendships, including friendships between boys and also across gender. And also baking.

Something That Made Me Think: A few weeks ago, Veronica Roth, the author of Divergent, wrote a wonderful piece called “Do I Like It? Reflecting on Divergent After 15 Years.” I appreciated the way she drew back the curtain on the experience of getting that sheer volume of feedback, some positive and some negative, and named the intrinsically human experience of amplifying the negative in your own brain. And how she then explained the impact that had on her future projects and her mental health. I feel like this one is a must-read for anyone who makes stuff, because she’s right: “do I like it?” is usually the sanest metric we should be using to evaluate our own work. 

Something That Made Me Laugh: 

YOU’RE WELCOME.

Brittany:

What I’m Reading: I’ve obviously been meaning to read Emily Wilde’s Encyclopedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett for ages, pretty much since the second I heard about it, but for some reason I just… didn’t. Does this ever happen to you? You find a book that just seems PERFECT for you, but you keep finding excuses not to read it? This happens to me fairly often, and I’m honestly not quite sure why. Maybe it has something to do with being afraid something that sounds so perfect will somehow disappoint you? Maybe it’s a bit of bizarre defiance, a bit of ‘I shall NOT engage with this thing just because I should’? Both? I really don’t know, but I’m glad I got over it because I am really, really enjoying this book! It’s kind of perfect to read now too, as the main character is literally writing an encyclopedia of fairies from around the world… which is pretty much exactly what our book, Fairylore, is! 

What I’m Listening To: I pretty much only listen to Florence’s Everybody Scream album now. I am obsessed. I love all the songs SO MUCH. So yeah, not much new music for you from us for this list I guess? Oh, also the KPop Demon Hunters soundtrack. For reasons.

What I’m Watching: To the surprise of no one who knows my secret morbid tendencies, I love a good murder mystery tv show. Right now, Josh and I are loving Elsbeth and High Potential. They’re both a little offbeat, both center brilliant, quirky women in delightful outfits, and are just ridiculously fun to watch. Speaking of brilliant, quirky women in delightful outfits who solve murders, we also started watching old episodes of Murder She Wrote! It is 80s-tastic nostalgia, yes, but it’s also just good. I’m constantly impressed with how excellent the twists are. Also, all of these women are not 25 and yet totally embodying their awesomeness. I love to see it. Lastly, The Pitt is back and every Thursday we are totally CONSUMED by that utter masterpiece of a medical drama.   

Something That Made Me Think: I’ve been reading and watching a lot about the death of James Van Der Beek recently. Van Der Beek starred on Dawson’s Creek, a show I am not ashamed to admit I was totally obsessed with when I was in 8th/9th grade in particular, so his death was obviously very sad to me. That said, the variety of articles and essays and videos that have come out in the aftermath of his death from colon cancer on February 11th, at only 48 years old, have been fascinating to see. I read one about the horror of the expenses of medical care in the US, care that essentially bankrupted Van Der Beek’s family despite the fact that he was a relatively famous actor who worked fairly consistently before his illness (I especially loved when he parodied himself, as in the TV show Don’t Trust the B— in Apt 23 and Ke-”dollar sign”-ha’s music video for “Blow.”) I watched a video from a guy who always strongly resembled Van Der Beek musing how his death meant that, while he would continue to age, Van Der Beek would not. He would have to face the truth he would probably never be told he looked like him again. Pieces about what Dawson represented for a generation, clips from the show, expressions of sadness… I don’t have a grand statement on what it all means yet, maybe I never will, but processing this celebrity death has felt different, and that has certainly made me think.  

Something That Made Me Laugh: I saw this tote bag in a bookstore this past weekend, and it absolutely cracked me up.

I 100% regret not buying it, despite the fact that I have way, way, WAY too many tote bags already. #justsirenstuff

What are you reading, listening to, watching, thinking about, and laughing at lately? If something is really delighting you, reply in the comments!

_{Disclosure: We are affiliates of Bookshop.org and may earn a commission if you click through any of our book links and make a purchase. Thank you for supporting independent bookshops!}

The post Curiosities // February 2026 appeared first on The Carterhaugh School of Folklore and the Fantastic.

Here’s a list of all the events and publications that we can link you to in the coming weeks.

Events

February 5 at 7:00 PM ET

Book Club – While our February book club is over, our Patreon members in the $7+ tiers can watch the replay! 

Join us on February 5th at 7PM ET to discuss Naomi Novik’s beautiful novella The Summer War! A short one about different kinds of love for the short month when we celebrate love :).

Here’s the publisher’s description:

“Celia discovered her talent for magic on the day her beloved oldest brother, Argent, left home. Furious at him for abandoning her in a war-torn land, she lashed out, not realizing her childish, angry words would become imbued with the power of prophecy, dooming him to a life without love.

While Argent wanders the world, forced to seek only fame and glory instead of the love and belonging he truly desires, Celia attempts to undo the curse she placed on him. Yet even as she grows from a girl to a woman, she cannot find the solution—until she learns the truth about the centuries-old war between her own people and the summerlings, immortal beings who hold a relentless grudge against their mortal neighbors.

Now, with the aid of her unwanted middle brother, Celia may be able to both undo her eldest brother’s curse and heal the lands so long torn apart by the Summer War.”

And here are a few reviews:

“This surprisingly tender paean to love of all kinds is a treat.” – Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

“… a magical, medieval-esque folk song captured on paper […] that will transport you into another reality for at least a couple of hours.” – Reactor

If you would like to join future book clubs, make sure you’re on the $7+ tier on our Patreon for February! 

February 10 at 7:00 PM ET

Fairylore Book Launch Party – Our book is coming out on February 10 and if you preorder, you can get an invitation to our book launch party! It would mean the world to us if you’d buy a copy (or ask your library to buy a copy!) To sweeten the deal, if you preorder before 7PM ET tomorrow, you can join us for our book launch party and get some other pretty cool bonuses! There will be PRIZES. And words from Terri Windling, who wrote the foreword! 

If you love fairies and other supernatural creatures from around the world (yōkai, jinn, huldufólk, and literally dozens more), this book is for you. It’s built on real scholarship (check out the bibliography in the back, we had no chill) and it’s extremely readable and stunningly gorgeous, thanks to art by Annie Stegg Gerard and Kristin Kwan.

February 19 at 7:00 PM ET

Fairy Tale Salon – Here is the info for our February Fairy-Tale Salon.

Prompt: Embracing the Weird

Has anything really weird, or unexplainable, or even straight up supernatural ever happened to you? Have you ever followed an intuition that worked out fantastically, had an odd encounter you couldn’t really explain away, or had something happen to you that made you say “well, THAT was weird!” We want to hear all about it! If you can’t think of anything, we encourage you to go back to an older prompt of ours about small world stories: small world stories are unexpected encounters and connections that make you think “wow, what a small world” like running into your 8th grade teacher while on vacation in a different country or finding out you and your future husband attended the same birthday party when you were six years old, that kind of thing. That absolutely works for this prompt too!

If you would like to join us, make sure that you’re on the Salonnières tier or higher on our Patreon for February!

February 23 at 6:45 PM ET

Smithsonian Associates – Snow White – In 1937, our perception of fairy tales was forever changed when Walt Disney Productions released its first full-length animated film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. The film was a massive critical and commercial success. Culturally, it reset expectations of what fairy tales are, who they’re for, and what they represent.

Yet the 1937 Disney film is only a part of a much bigger “Snow White” tradition. Walt Disney based his film on Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm’s 19th-century short story “Little Snow-White,” but variants of the story can be found all over the world, from “Eliduc,” a medieval narrative poem by Marie de France, to “The Young Slave” by Giambattista Basile. Even William Shakespeare told a version in one of his romance plays.

Every version of this fairy tale revolves around a deadly conflict between a mother figure and her daughter, and themes of beauty, jealousy, rivalry, cannibalism, and death remain prominent throughout its history. Contemporary creators continue to reimagine the tale in formats ranging from big-budget Hollywood films to quirky short stories to inventive novel-length retellings.

Folklorists Sara Cleto and Brittany Warman do a deep dive into the fairy tale of “Snow White,” revealing folkloric and literary tales that provided the bedrock preceding Disney’s version and examining how the story has been retold in contemporary times. This lecture also includes prompts for audience interaction.

Get your tickets here!

Current Courses Available

Ravens in the Labyrinth: World Mythology as Folklore ($427) – The story of the world has never been simple. (If you’ve been around Carterhaugh for a while, you know our tagline is basically “it’s complicated.”)

But we do know that we tell stories to try to make sense of it all – why we’re here, how love works, what happens after we die. And no matter where we go in the world, we find the same thing:

Myths. Mysterious, strange, sacred.

Not because they offer tidy answers, but because they hold our most important questions.

Where does love come from? Why do we fear the dark? What makes us human?

Some say all myths boil down to one universal tale. We say: not even close. 4 weeks. 20 daily lessons. 20+ myths. 4 live gatherings. 2 folklorists. 1 magical community. And you.

Step into the otherworlds of myth, where gods walk among mortals, tricksters bend fate, spirits demand sacrifice, and heroes confront –and occasionally cheat – their destiny. For millennia, these sacred stories have carried humanity’s deepest truths and realities – creation, loss, desire, terror, death, and awe – from one generation to the next.

In this course, we’ll guide you through the mysteries, power, and folklore of mythic tradition, exploring how these ancient narratives shaped human understanding of the world and how later writers and thinkers reimagined myth for new ages.

In Ravens in the Labyrinth, you’ll:

Learn what sets myths apart from legends, fairy tales, and other folk narratives

Explore how contemporary writers tangle with ancient myths (and how this helps keep their power alive)

Identify the greatest historical pitfalls and the biggest lies of mythic scholarship and pop culture

Discover why myth helps humanity grapple with the most momentous questions at our core

Connect with a community of smart, kind, hilarious humans who love folklore as much as you do, with two folklorists acting as your personal Virgils of mythology

Click here to grab it!

Find Your Fairy Tale Mini-Course ($17) – Find Your Fairy Tale is a bite-sized mini course made to help you connect genuinely with the world of fairy tales and tap into the personal stories that underpin your life – so that you can harness their power or even start to change them. We guarantee academic excellence, dedication to whimsy, and an avenue right into a real sense of everyday enchantment. 

Some people swear by their Enneagram (we’re both 3s) or their Zodiac sign (*waves in Virgo and Scorpio*). We’re all about fairy tales and the insights they reveal.

Click here to grab it!

Press

We were interviewed on Deborah Zehna-Adams’ Substack about writing and Fairylore! Check it out here! 

We had the honor of being interviewed on Drinking Tea with Monsters, a podcast dedicated to “OCD and other, less scary monsters.” We talked about Brittany’s struggles with OCD (and how Sara supports her), about Carterhaugh, and how we work together. We also retold the fairy tale “The Boy Who Went Forth to Learn About Fear” in our own, delightfully irreverent way (did you know it can be applied to neurodivergence? And features a whole ghost bowling scene?), so don’t miss that at the end. Click here to listen!

Publications

OUR BOOK, FAIRYLORE, IS AVAILABLE FOR PRE-ORDER!!!

Here’s the official description from our publisher, Sterling Ethos @ Hachette:

“A gorgeously illustrated guide to the fae, filled with intriguing and well-researched explorations of folklore from around the world.

In Ireland, the sinister leannán sídhe suck the life from artists and poets in exchange for muse-like inspiration. In Japan, the elusive zashiki-warashi bestow prosperity on the human families whose homes they share. From the dvorovoi of Russia to the Brazilian curupira, Malaysia’s orang bunian to English brownies, and the moksin tongbŏp of Korea, the world is full of magical creatures who assist, haunt, and dazzle humankind.

This illustrated compendium written by expert folklorists invites us to enter the realm of the fairy folk. Sections dedicated to fairies of the home, nature, romance, and more emphasize what fairies do and what they mean to people around the world. Each chapter illustrates a different way of seeing fairies—a way they’ve been used to explain our world and ourselves.

This is a fascinating reference for anyone who has ever been enchanted by fairies—or would like to be.”

Pre-order our book, tell us your order number, and we’ll send you some sweet bonuses.

Pre-Order Bonus #1: The Fairies of the Cutting-Room Floor

We are very sorry to say it, but some fairies didn’t make the cut for the final draft of Fairylore. We mean them no disrespect and often had VERY intentional reasons for cutting them – check out this PDF to learn all about them (and why they got the axe in the end!) Spoiler alert: a lot of them are Celtic because, well, there are a lot of different Celtic fairies, there are already a lot of wonderful books about them, and we simply couldn’t include them all. We still love them though.

Pre-Order Bonus #2: The Cut Stories eBook

Likewise, we had a lot of different public domain stories we could have used that we sadly couldn’t fit in – you can find them in this eBook though! Want to read about a troll that gets transformed into a cat? A banshee story that our publishers nixed because it is looonnnggg? How about the story of a Japanese guy who gets taken away to a fairyland under the sea? Of course you do!

Pre-Order Bonus #3: VIP Ticket to the VIRTUAL LAUNCH PARTY

We’re having a virtual party on February 10, 2026 (the day the book officially comes out), and we want YOU to be there! There will be behind-the-scenes gossip, lots of bonus fairy info, and PRIZES! But the only way to get your VIP ticket is by pre-ordering our book, so keep reading to find out how to get on our exclusive guest list (and make sure that the Red Cap bouncer doesn’t toss you out… or worse!)

Pre-order here!

We had a poem written from the alternative perspectives of Wendy and Tinker Bell from Peter Pan in the latest Winter Solstice issue of Eternal Haunted Summer! It’s called “Letters from Neverland,” and you can read it right here. The whole issue is themed around fairylore, and it’s FULL of delights, so definitely check it out!

Kelly Jarvis wrote a wonderful review of our new book, Fairylore, in The Fairy Tale Magazine! “Fairylore: A Compendium of the Fae Folk is a necessary book for all those who seek the rare blend of intellectual contemplation and fairy enchantment that Dr. Sara Cleto and Dr. Brittany Warman provide. It is both a valuable academic resource and a work of art that I will cherish and return to often as I continue to explore the fairy magic that beckons from ‘betwixt and between.’” Check out their review of Fairylore and preorder our book here!

Check out our article, “Fairies of the Moon— Excerpts from Fairylore: A Compendium of the Fae Folk” in Enchanted Living magazine! Learn about fairies who are associated with the moon in their beautiful moon goddess issue.

The post The February 2026 Carterhaugh Events Roundup appeared first on The Carterhaugh School of Folklore and the Fantastic.

“If global folklore were a rainbow, then Fairylore is a portrait painted liberally in all seven colors. It’s the faerie compendium I’ve been waiting for, one that actually represents the vast richness and delectable variations of our world and its magic. More of this, please.”
—Shveta Thakrar, author of the Andre Norton Nebula Award finalist Star Daughter

(Eeee, we were so hoping for responses like this, thank you!! If you haven’t seen them yet, definitely check out all the fabulous blurbs that are rolling in from people like Morgan Daimler, Mary McMyne, Daniel Rabuzzi, and Kelly Jarvis – we’re posting them on our pre-order page!)

In her email with the blurb though, she casually asked us if we could point her toward tales of changelings in India, which we had mentioned very briefly in our book. She told us that she had heard about changelings featured in Indian folklore before, but that nobody seemed to really know where the source for this knowledge was coming from.

Did we know? Heck yeah we did, we are research puzzle FIENDS. And we have the receipts. 

So we thought it would be fun to tell you about our journey on this topic and what we found (and to give you a hint of the kind of research that went into Fairylore and is currently going into our new mythology course… we always try our best to make sure our sources are valid and that we don’t just repeat things because they’ve been said before, so we’re always doing a LOT of this kind of work!) 

So here we go.

In our book, on P. 206 in the “Changeling” entry, we quote Joyce Underwood Munro’s essay “The Invisible Made Visible: The Fairy Changeling as a Folk Articulation of Failure to Thrive in Infants and Children” when we mention that stories of changelings have appeared in places like Egypt and India as well as the Celtic and Germanic countries most know them from. 

Munro’s quotation cites the source for this knowledge as a book called Folktales of Egypt by Hasan M. El-Shamy, a very well-respected source for Egyptian folklore. In that book, El-Shamy does say that the belief is found in India too, on P. 285, but he doesn’t give an example, so that made us be like “okay, but where are YOU getting this from though?”  

To find out more, we went to Stith Thompson’s trusty Motif-Index of Folk Literature. 

Under “Changeling” (Motif F321.1), India is listed with a citation for Penzer VIII 87 n. 1. Um, okay, what’s what? Well, a quick Google search revealed that it was The Ocean of Story, a book translated and edited by a British guy named Norman Mosley Penzer in the 1880s-1920s. It’s a 10-volume English translation of the 11th-century Sanskrit collection Katha Sarit Sagara by Somadeva, and still one of the best repositories of ancient Indian folklore we have in English.

If you go to P. 87 of Volume 8, you get this – 

​​Ah ha! It appears the girl described here is indeed a changeling, a non-mortal substitute for a human child. They even switched her with a human child! Note 1 on this page directs back to Volume III, P. 131, which says this:

Which appears to be a recounting of the birth/switching of the non-mortal girl in the story in Volume 8 (and the section even uses the title “The Substituted Child”!) It doesn’t get much more clear cut than that – the changeling concept is definitely a part of Indian folklore!

Now, did Shakepeare have this in mind when he featured an Indian changeling in A Midsummer Night’s Dream? Probably not :P. But it’s definitely yet another example of the fact that fairies/fairy-like beings, and their typical shenanigans, pop up all over the world in different cultures and contexts. 

If you want (a lot) more on FAIRIES, definitely click here and pre-order our book before the 10th when it comes out so that you can get all the goodies (including a ticket to our LAUNCH PARTY! There will be prizes! And special guests! Eee!)

And if research like this makes your heart sing too, you’re definitely going to want to sign up for Ravens in the Labyrinth, our new course on world mythology with a delightfully Carterhaugh-ian spin! We’re enrolling until 2/13 at midnight ET, but the early bird price goes away this Friday (1/30) at midnight ET, so click here to check it out! 

(The beautiful Indian nagini image at the top of this post is part of a painting by Annie Stegg that was made for the book!)

The post Indian Changelings? appeared first on The Carterhaugh School of Folklore and the Fantastic.

We’re donating 10% of everything we make from this launch to the ACLU of Minnesota and the Immigrant Rapid Response Fund. Because community is everything and free speech is our constitutional right.

Also, defund ICE. 

Now back to our regularly scheduled programming:

We finally did it. 

We’ve created a brand-new course about MYTHOLOGY.

Myth is, of course, one of the big three folk narrative categories, along with legends and fairy tales, and it’s real bedrock-of-society stuff. 

It’s taken us since 2018 (?!) to circle back to this topic, and we’ll tell you more about why that is later this week. But in the meantime, here’s our pitch:

The story of the world has never been simple.

(If you’ve been around Carterhaugh for a while, you know our tagline is basically “it’s complicated.”)

But we do know that we tell stories to try to make sense of it all – why we’re here, how love works, what happens after we die. And no matter where we go in the world, we find the same thing:

Myths. Mysterious, strange, sacred.

Not because they offer tidy answers, but because they hold our most important questions.

Where does love come from?

Why do we fear the dark?

What makes us human?

Some say all myths boil down to one universal tale.

We say: not even close.

Welcome to Ravens in the Labyrinth: World Mythology as Folklore!

4 weeks. 20 daily lessons. 20+ myths. 4 live gatherings. 2 folklorists. 1 magical community. And you.

Will you join us in the labyrinth? Click here now!

More soon!

P.S. Early bird pricing will run through this Friday, January 30th, until midnight ET, so if you want our best price, tap this link and enroll before then!

The post Ravens in the Labyrinth is OPEN! appeared first on The Carterhaugh School of Folklore and the Fantastic.