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

Events

August 1–3

Dublin Irish Festival – We’re thrilled to announce that we’ll be giving three talks at the Dublin Irish Festival in Columbus, Ohio this August! Our talks will be:

Saturday, August 2

1:30PM-2:15PM – “Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray and Irish Fairylore”

5:30PM-6:15PM – “Irish Folklore and Bram Stoker’s Dracula”

Sunday, August 3

1:00AM-1:45AM – “Terrors of Irish Fairylore”

All of our events will take place in the Spoken Word tent.

Click here for more information about the festival and get your tickets!

August 19 at 7:00 PM ET

Book Club – Join us to discuss Anne Ursu’s Not Quite a Ghost (as recommended to us by Hannah and many others in the Carterhaugh community!)

Here’s the description:

“The house seemed to sit apart from the others on Katydid Street, silent and alone, like it didn’t fit among them. For Violet Hart—whose family is about to move into the house on Katydid Street—very little felt like it fit anymore. Like their old home, suddenly too small since her mother remarried and the new baby arrived. Or Violet’s group of friends, which, since they started middle school, isn’t enough for Violet’s best friend, Paige. Everything seemed to be changing at once. But sometimes, Violet tells herself, change is okay.

That is, until Violet sees her new room. The attic bedroom in their new house is shadowy, creaky, and wrapped in old yellow wallpaper covered with a faded tangle of twisting vines and sickly flowers. And then, after moving in, Violet falls ill—and does not get better. As days turn into weeks without any improvement, her family growing more confused and her friends wondering if she’s really sick at all, she finds herself spending more time alone in the room with the yellow wallpaper, the shadows moving in the corners, wrapping themselves around her at night.

And soon, Violet starts to suspect that she might not be alone in the room at all.”

We absolutely loved this moving, creative, and beautiful story. Here are some reviews:

“This is a story about a haunted house—but it’s also a fresh, modern look at unexplained health issues, COVID-19 anxiety, changing friendships, and blended families. Compulsively readable and relatable, Ursu’s twisty middle grade novel is highly recommended.” — School Library Journal [Starred Review]

“Anne Ursu has done it again: Not Quite a Ghost is a tender-yet-fierce hug of a story, complete with heartbreaking (and heartwarming) friendship ups and downs, a sensitive and honest exploration of invisible illness, and a truly creepy thing that lives inside the walls of a very special house. I want to press this beautiful book into the hands of everyone I know.” — Claire Legrand, New York Times–bestselling author of Some Kind of Happiness

“Ursu draws on familiar elements of ghost stories and the renewed attention Long COVID has brought to chronic illness to create a deeply poignant exploration of what it means to be sick in a way the rest of the world dismisses.” — Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books [Starred Review]

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

August 20 at 6:45 PM ET

Smithsonian Associates: The Little Mermaid

Today, the wildly popular 1989 Disney film ensures that most people think of the tale of “The Little Mermaid” as one of triumph, a story of colorful underwater band scenes, daring ocean adventures, and happily ever afters. But the literary fairy tale that loosely inspired the classic movie is a haunting narrative that frequently leaves its readers unsettled, even melancholy. It is often a big surprise to read Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Little Mermaid” if you don’t know how different it really is.

Andersen’s mermaid wants to be part of the human world, but unlike her Disney counterpart, she fails to meet the terms of the sea witch’s bargain and dies. Though this conclusion is a far cry from the happy ending most expect, it is in line with traditional folkloric tales of mermaids. The heart of the mermaid’s story is always longing: longing for love, longing for a human soul, longing to be part of a world that seems forever closed to her. Many other creators have taken a crack at revising the mermaid’s tale of longing, ranging from Hayao Miyazaki’s anime Ponyo to Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué’s literary fairy tale “Undine,” with varied tones and takeaways.

Folklorists Sara Cleto and Brittany Warman do a deep dive into “The Little Mermaid” fairy tale to discuss folkloric and literary tales that inspired the story and what, if anything, it has to do with Andersen’s troubled and complicated life. They also explore how the story has been retold in contemporary times, including but also moving beyond Disney.

Click here to get your tickets!

August 26 at 7:00 PM ET

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

Prompt: Bring Your Favorite Poem

Quest: The poet Andrea Gibson recently passed away from ovarian cancer at the incredibly young age of just 49. The outpouring of love for her work (and the reposts of some of her most beautiful poetry) inspired us to dedicate our August salon to the pure wonder that certain poems can inspire. For our meeting, please bring one or two of your favorite poems to share – these can be pieces that especially moved you, texts with truly great stories, or even poems that you wrote! Aim to leave us breathless with the magic of text and sound and thought and moment.

If you’d like to participate, just make sure that you’re on the Salonnières tier or higher on our Patreon for August!

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 did a delightful interview with Addie Hirschten for the Studio Alchemy podcast! Click here to read about it and listen.

Publications

Our poem “Our Glass Hearts,” based on an obscure but truly magical fairy tale called “The Three Sisters and Their Glass Hearts,” won the 2025 Fairy Tale Magazine poetry contest, and we are still screaming.

We had two poems published recently by two editors that we adore. You can read “A Choir in Gray” (written for our student Melinda) in Eternal Haunted Summer, edited by Rebecca Buchanan, right here. And you can find “Reliable Girls” (a joyful twist on “Diamonds and Toads”) in Worlds of Possibility, edited by Julia Rios, here.