Kate Forsyth
Kate Forsyth
Kate Forsyth is an Australian author. She is best known for her historical novel Bitter Greens, which interweaves a retelling of the Rapunzel fairy tale with the true life story of the woman who first told the tale, the 17th century French writer Charlotte-Rose de Caumont de La Force...
NationalityAustralian
ProfessionAuthor
CountryAustralia
bones built stories
Stories are like that. Like cities, they are built on the stones and bones of the past.
allow despite people stories
Stories are the common ground that allow people to connect, despite all our defences and all our differences.
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Storytelling is as old as speech. It existed before humans first began to carve shapes in stones and press their hands upon the rocky walls of caves.
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The ogres and witches and giants of fairytales stand in as metaphors for those obstacles that we all face in our own lives.
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You cannot write a book unless it is totally inhabiting your imagination and you are totally engrossed with it. Which is a kind word for obsession.
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As an adult, I have often been deep in serious conversation with someone I've highly respected and seen them roll an eye as my mouth has mangled yet another magnificently conceived, clumsily articulated sentence. In my mind, the words are mellifluous as honey. In my mouth, they are shards of glass.
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I love fairy tales because of their haunting beauty and magical strangeness. They are set in worlds where anything can happen. Frogs can be kings, a thicket of brambles can hide a castle where a royal court has lain asleep for a hundred years, a boy can outwit a giant, and a girl can break a curse with nothing but her courage and steadfastness.
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I was attacked by a dog when I was a toddler, and my injuries were so bad, I spent quite a bit of my childhood in and out of hospital. Books were absolutely my salvation during those years.
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I wrote my novel 'Bitter Greens' as the creative component of a Doctorate of Creative Arts and am now looking at the history of the Rapunzel tale as my theoretical component.
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Many people think fairy tales and retellings of fairy tales are only for children, but I'm not the only writer to take an old tale and retell it for a sophisticated adult audience.
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One of the biggest mistakes people make is to think that what you need to write a novel is imagination, creativity and a facility with words. Yes, you need all those things, but a novel is a highly complex organism that needs to be dealt with in quite a logical manner.
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One reason why so little is known about the German resistance is because it was never a united movement in the way that it was in France or Poland. It was simply too dangerous.
manage stops supposed
Sanitising stories, leaching out all of the sense of danger and the darkness out of the stories, actually reduces them and stops them from doing what they're supposed to do, which is teach us how to manage our lives.
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Since the moment I could hold a pencil, I have spent nearly all day every day writing. And there is not an age group that I have not written for. You can read me from birth 'til death.