Cate's fiction, plays, and book reviews have been published by The Masters Review, Fairy Tale Review, The Brooklyn Rail, Sycamore Review, Bookslut, Slate, Stage Partners, and more. She lives in State College, Pennsylvania.
What saves these lost mothers is different in every fairy tale; often they’re brought back simply by virtue of being recognized. For me, coming back to life took time.
Class systems are not fixed in fairy tales—in fact, fairy tales would almost seem to argue for the redistribution of wealth.
The long and fluid history of fairy tales shows us that men who want to control, dehumanize, and violate women have always existed.
What, exactly, are the building blocks that make a fairy tale a fairy tale? And who—or what—might be making them in the future?
In fairy tales, the only good mother is a dead one.
Love is born in the quiet ways we reveal ourselves; how we notice and love our partners when they take on new, surprising forms.
On the thin line between fairy tales and real-life horror stories, and how we survive.
Too many people are fed one version of a story, a false one, and do not interrogate it. But the world of fairy tales is rife with opportunities to practice critical thinking, if only we look closer.
We’ve all had to reckon with the burden of untold stories. Every woman has one, and every woman carries around with her the stories of others.
