Terri Windling

Stand-alone novels:


The Changeling — (1995) Ages 9-12. Publisher: Convinced that his sister, Polly, is really a changeling whose soul has been stolen and replaced with the spirit of a mountain faery, Charlie must find a way to save her without being dispirited himself.

The Armless Maiden: And Other Tales for Childhood's Survivors — (1995) Publisher: An exploration of the benefits of a fantasy life for victims of childhood abuse combines the works of such author as Charles de Lint, Jane Yolen, and Steven Gould with essays on the transforming powers of fairy tales.

The Armless Maiden: And Other Tales for Childhood's Survivors

I love adult fairy tales, but it seems that all too often, writers pump up the sex and violence to render the tales "adult," rather than more deeply exploring the human emotional dramas in the stories. Maybe that's why I love the anthology The Armless Maiden: And Other Tales for Childhood's Survivors which was edited by Terri Windling. The tales and poems here do include sex and violence, yes, but at their heart is the strength and resilience of the human spirit.

So many of the classic fairy tales include situations that we would now call abuse. Hansel and Gretel were abandoned, Donkeyskin suffered incest, and the original Sleeping Beauty was raped rather than kissed. In most of these stories, the protagonist endures great pain, then rises above the suffering and triumphs over his or her tormentors. In the old versions, the protagonist often does this by gaining fortune and position. In the retellings collected in The Armless Maiden, the victory is more often psychological. Marina Warner writes that, more than any other distinguishing characteristic, "metamorphosis defines the fairy tale." In these stories, we see victims transformed into survivors.

These are serious, and often heartbreaking, retellings. My personal favorites include Emma Bull's poem "The Stepsister's Story," in which one of Cinderella's stepsisters regrets the friendship they never had; and Ellen Kushner's short story "Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep," which features a young girl left in the care of a cold-hearted guardian and haunted by the ghost of the woman's unhappy daughter. I recommend The Armless Maidenboth to abuse survivors and to anyone with an interest in sensitively retold fairy tales.
—Kelly Lasiter

The Wood Wife — (1996) The Wood Wife won the Mythopoeic Award for Novel of the Year. Publisher: Maggie Black, a writer, inherits a house outside Tucson, Arizona, from a famous poet with whom she had corresponded, and who met a mysterious death. As she meets the local inhabitants, Maggie becomes aware of undercurrents of magic and fantasy, and that all is not as it seems.

The Wood Wife

Our heroine, Maggie, is reeling from her divorce and drifting rather aimlessly through life — she considers herself a poet but hasn't written a poem in years. Then, her mentor dies mysteriously — drowned in a dry creekbed — and inexplicably leaves her his house in the Southwestern desert. She moves there, hoping to research a biography of him. At first, Maggie doesn't like the desert; it seems sterile, forbidding, devoid of charm. Then one night a pooka cuddles up to her in bed, and nothing is the same after that...

Maggie soon discovers a world of magic in the desert (and we, the readers, discover it right along with her), and digs up some fascinating secrets about her mentor's life. And suddenly, all the pieces come together.

Both a mystery and a fantasy, The Wood Wife is gorgeously written and a good read. As a writer, I was especially moved by the discussions of whether or not Maggie was still a poet. Well done.
—Kelly Lasiter

Other Anthologies with Ellen Datlow   

The Green Man — (2002) Young adult. Publisher: One of our most universal myths is that of the Green Man — the spirit who stands for Nature in its most wild and untamed form. Through the ages and around the world, the Green Man and other nature spirits have appeared in stories, songs, and artwork, as well as many beloved fantasy novels, including Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. Now Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling, the acclaimed editors of over thirty anthologies, have gathered some of today’s finest writers of magical fiction to interpret the spirits of nature in short stories and poetry. Folklorist and artist Charles Vess brings his stellar eye and brush to the decorations, and Windling provides an introduction exploring Green Man symbolism and forest myth. The Green Man is required reading — not only for fans of fantasy fiction but for those interested in mythology and the mysteries of the wilderness.

The Green Man

In fairy tales, whenever someone journeys into the forest, you just know something strange is about to occur and that the protagonist’s life is going to be changed forever. The same is true of the stories and poems featured in The Green Man: Tales from the Mythic Forest. With this collection, editors Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling kicked off a series of young adult anthologies, each devoted to a particular theme. Here, the theme is wild nature, and most of the stories feature teenage characters who encounter the wilderness and undergo a coming-of-age experience there.

Of course, I have my favorites. Delia Sherman contributes a tale of the Faery Queen of Central Park, and the insecure girl who faces her in a battle of wits. Tanith Lee presents probably the darkest of the tales, "Among the Leaves So Green," about two outcast sisters who each have a special destiny. (If I had to pick one favorite, this haunting tale would probably be it.) Emma Bull's "Joshua Tree" is a lovely story about high school, raves, friendship, and mystery set in an unexpected wilderness — a desert. Jane Yolen's poem "Cailleach Bheur" is terrific. For these stories and many more, I recommend this book.

I found a few of the stories disappointing. Patricia McKillip's "Hunter's Moon," while beautifully written, is a little too heavy-handed in its moral about hunting and meat-eating. In “Fee, Fie, Foe, Et Cetera," Gregory Maguire fleshes out Jack (of Beanstalk fame), his mom, his brother, and the harp, yet none of these characters were really sympathetic to me. Again, the writing is good, but the story is just not for me.

A little advice on how to get the most out of The Green Man: Take your time and savor the stories one or two at a time. Don’t make my mistake and plow through half the book in one night! Unlike most of Datlow and Windling’s anthologies, there’s a great deal of similarity among the stories in terms of their structure. After you've read six stories about kids having life-changing experiences in the forest, they start to run together, and you tend to miss the finer points of each story. Instead, you're thinking, "OK, the kid's getting lost in the woods now... time to encounter the supernatural...time to learn the life lesson..."

But if you read The Green Man slowly, you’ll be better able to appreciate each story’s subtleties, and I think you’ll find this anthology worth reading. It’s visually gorgeous, too; Charles Vess provides cover art and beginning-of-chapter “decorations” that are elegant and fitting. —Kelly Lasiter

The Faery Reel: Tales from the Twilight Realm — (2004) Young adult. Publisher: Faeries, or creatures like them, can be found in almost every culture the world over — benevolent and terrifying, charming and exasperating, shifting shape from country to country, story to story, and moment to moment. In The Faery Reel, acclaimed anthologists Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling have asked some of today’s finest writers of fantastic fiction for short stories and poems that draw on the great wealth of world faery lore and classic faery literature. This companion to the World Fantasy Award–winner and Locus bestseller The Green Man is edgy, provocative, and thoroughly magical. Like the faeries themselves.

The Faery Reel: Tales from the Twilight Realm

The Faery Reel is an indispensable tome for anyone who has a mania for faeries. Aside from the short stories in this anthology, the comprehensive introduction of Terri Windling on the fey and the illustrations by Charles Vess are worth the price of admission in themselves. Moreover, the last few pages feature a Further Reading section on the topic of faeries. The typography of the book is appropriate to the faery theme and makes the text quite readable. In other words, it's a really pretty book.

But The Faery Reel isn't just about exterior beauty, and I'd still buy the book if only for the story selections and the poetry. There are actually a lot of stories I liked in this anthology, and choosing a select few to talk about is quite difficult: "Catnyp" by Delia Sherman reconciles the seemingly anachronistic topics of libraries and faeries. "Tengu Mountain" by Gregory Frost is an adventurous Japanese tale that ends perfectly. "The Night Market" by Holly Black is a guilty pleasure, using Philippine myth yet incorporating horror in a way I didn't expect. "Never Never" by Bruce Glassco is a new take on a very familiar icon while Jeffrey Ford's "The Annals of Eelin-Ok" is probably one of my top ten Ford stories.

I really love this anthology. Flipping through the contents, I'm thinking hey, I recall and love that story… and that one… and that one… and those weren't even my favorites! The only thing that doesn't appeal to me is the poetry, not because the poetry is bad but because I'm just the type that doesn't really appreciate the medium. But despite that, The Faery Reel is an anthology to cherish. It’s a great resource on the fey and belongs on everyone's bookshelf! —Charles Tan
FanLit thanks Charles Tan from Bibliophile Stalker for contributing this guest review.

Salon Fantastique: Fifteen Original Tales of Fantasy — (2006) Publisher: Here are original stories that straddle the borderline between "fantasy" and "mainstream" fiction, stories both bright and dark in tone (without straying into the realm of horror fiction). Sometimes set in the contemporary or historical world, sometimes pure fantasy or an imagined "history," these are striking, fresh, finely crafted works that demonstrate the best the short story form has to offer. Among the authors included are Delia Sherman, Peter Beagle, Marly Youmans, Jeffrey Ford, Paul Di Filippo, Greer Gilman, Gregory Maguire, and Lucius Shepard.

Salon Fantastique: Fifteen Original Tales of Fantasy

Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling are the two greatest short fiction editors of fantasy and horror of our time. Their annual collections of the Year's Best Fantasy and Horror provided us, for 16 straight years, with the best short genre and slipstream fiction from all sources. Their anthologies have defined cutting edge fantasy.

Salon Fantastique is more uneven than most of Datlow and Windling's collections. This themeless anthology, containing stories intended, as the introduction states, "to evoke the liberating, creative spirit of a literary salon," contains some very fine stories. It also, oddly enough, contains some very bad stories.

Delia Sherman's "La Fee Verte" opens the book with a fairy story set in the mid-nineteenth century, a time of great political turmoil in France. Victorine is a high-class whore, and so is her lover, La Fee Verte. La Fee Verte is a sort of Cassandra for the 1800s, seeing all and telling her tales, seducing her customers with her voice and driving them away in the same fashion. Victorine loses La Fee Verte to a novelist, who is delighted with her visions of a vehicle actually landing on the moon — a novelist who reminds one of Jules Verne and his From Earth to the Moon. Although Victorine goes on to one protector after another, none of them has her heart; only La Fee Verte can make that claim. And over the years, Victorine catches glimpses of La Fee Verte, always telling truths, often truths her listeners don't want to hear. The passing of the years, the building of history, are as absinthe dreams in this lovely tale.

Jeffrey Ford is one of the best short story writers in the genre these days. His tale here, "The Night Whiskey," is strikingly imaginative. The viewpoint character is a "drunk harvester" who does his job only one night a year, when a thick black brandy known as Night Whiskey is consumed by seven lottery winners. What the Night Whiskey does, and its consequences for those in the small rural town where it is made from death berries, make a wondrous story.

Peter S. Beagle's "Chandail," set in the Innkeeper's World universe, is a sophisticated story of sea creatures that possess their own peculiar gift of hallucination and impose it on humans, who, to their sorrow, will not escape the memory easily. "Concealment Shoes" by Marly Youmans has some marvelous imagery, including one description of a cat having won a chase that I'll think of whenever I watch my own cat go after specks of light. Christopher Barzak's "The Guardian of the Egg" is deliciously strange, promising a new, clean, bright world with nature restored to her strength and vigor in a way not seen in our suburbs in our lifetimes.

Of all the Paul Di Filippo short stories I've read, "Femaville 29" is my favorite, telling a story of a major natural catastrophe and its aftermath and, in a way, the rising of a new Atlantis from a tsunami. Gavin Grant's "Yours, Etc." is a sad parable of a marriage in which communication has all but died. David Prill's "The Mask of '67" promises to join Prill's cult novels as a cult story; you really can't go home again, not as the same person you were when you left. Catherynne M. Valente's "A Gray and Soundless Tide" revisits the legend of the selkie, a melancholy story of loneliness and loss.

Some stories are experiments gone awry. Gregory Maguire's "Nottamun Town" is a confusing mess, and Greer Gilman's "Down the Wall" never quite manages to tell a story. A few others simply don't rise to the high level established by the majority of the tales, and suffer by the comparison. Most anthologies have a few stories that don't quite make the grade, and Salon Fantastique as a whole doesn't overly suffer from the lesser tales.

Datlow and Windling's new anthology is a must for any serious fantasy reader. That it is available only in trade paperback is a bit of a mystery: if ever an anthology deserved hard covers, it's this one. But that does make it especially accessible to the reader who buys too many books and can use a break in the price on this one, or the reader who rarely buys books because they're too expensive. Salon Fantastique is one you'll want on your shelf, to return to again and again. The good stories in it are that good.
—Terry Weyna

The Coyote Road: Trickster Tales — (2007) Young adult. Publisher: Trickster characters have long been a staple of folk literature — and are a natural choice for acclaimed editors Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling’s latest “mythic” anthology. The Coyote Road features a remarkable range of authors, including Holly Black, Charles de Lint, Ellen Klages, and Kelly Link, each with his or her unique look at a trickster character. Charles Vess’s remarkable decorations highlight the stories. The Coyote Road is essential reading for anyone interested in contemporary fantastic fiction.

The Coyote Road: Trickster Tales

Coyote Road: Trickster Tales is another thematic fantasy anthology by the trio of Ellen Datlow, Terri Windling, and Charles Vess. Coyote Road features twenty-six pieces of fiction and poetry. Each story is preceded by art by Vess and ends with a short bio and afterword from the author. In the Introduction, Windling gives us an extensive account of trickster tales around the world. The last few pages of the book consist of a Recommended Reading list of titles that tackle that subject as well.

Perhaps the best description I have for the stories here is that they're sophisticated and well-written. They're not easy reading and some have a slow pace, but they tend to leave a resonating emotion by the time you're done with them. This is probably one of the more "literary" anthologies, the type you read not because they're exciting but because they're well-crafted. What impressed me however was how diverse the stories were, as the authors explored the trickster theme and did not limit themselves to coyotes and ravens and foxes (but there are a fair share of those).

Here are my top three stories in the book: "The Fiddler of Bayou Teche" by Delia Sherman not only has good characterization but carries with it the flavor of bayou country and could easily be a modern legend; "The Other Labyrinth" by Jedediah Berry feels like an epic despite its actual brevity and was quite enjoyable; and "The Dreaming Wind" by Jeffrey Ford features the most unusual trickster of all and contains elements of magical realism that work out quite effectively.

Is Coyote Road for everyone? Well, the writing is solid, but the stories within aren’t the type to immediately catch your attention but rather grow on you over time. Instead of action and adventure, you have protagonists and antagonists that outwit their foes (just as any good trickster should do). And while I generally liked most of the stories, their pacing wasn’t conducive to an emotional high. Coyote Road is a good anthology with solid writing and a definite literary style, but if you're looking for simple and quick reads, this isn't the book for you. —Charles Tan
FanLit thanks Charles Tan from Bibliophile Stalker for contributing this guest review.

Troll's Eye View: A Book of Villainous Tales — (2009) Ages 9-12. Publisher: Everyone thinks they know the real story behind the villains in fairy tales — evil, no two ways about it. But the villains themselves beg to differ. In Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling's new anthology for younger readers, you'll hear from the Giant's wife ("Jack and the Beanstalk"), Rumplestiltskin, the oldest of the Twelve DancingPrincesses, and many more. A stellar lineup of authors, including Garth Nix, Holly Black, Neil Gaiman and Nancy Farmer, makes sure that these old stories do new tricks!

Troll's Eye View: A Book of Villainous Tales

Fairy tales were my first love when I was a child. My mother introduced me to the joys of stories with The Golden Book of Fairy Tales long before I learned how to read. My early reading included the first three volumes of The Junior Classics and Andrew Lang’s colorful fairy tale books. When Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling started editing anthologies of new takes on the old tales for adults with Snow White, Blood Red, I was delighted. And when Datlow and Windling started editing a series of original fiction for young adults based on fairy tales, I couldn’t resist them. Troll’s Eye View is one of four in a series of books for ages 10 and up, which also includes A Wolf at the Door, Swan Sister and The Beastly Bride.

Troll’s Eye View is subtitled “A Book of Villainous Tales,” but really, villains seem like an unfairly disparaged lot in most of these stories. In fact, it’s not unusual to find someone you thought was a heroine turn out to be a villain, as in Garth Nix’s “An Unwelcome Guest,” which portrays Rapunzel quite differently from the long-haired victim we’re used to. Sometimes the good guy is disguised as a villain, as in “Wizard’s Apprentice” by Delia Sherman, which is set in a store called “Evil Wizard Books,” a place I’m longing to visit. And the giant’s wife was apparently unfairly characterized by Jack — though not by much — as she reveals in Peter S. Beagle’s “Up the Down Beanstalk: A Wife Remembers.”

A few of the stories deal with the titular trolls. Midori Snyder’s “Molly” is about a troll named Dongoggle attempting to masquerade as human so that his wife and daughters can enjoy living in town, rather than in the wilds under a bridge. The titular Molly befriends the daughters, but has a motive for doing so, as the trolls discover when certain of their belongings go missing after a visit from the child. Dongoggle seeks revenge, which doesn’t work out quite the way he planned. Jane Yolen’s “Troll” is all about the hunger of a motherless child. Poor Troll isn’t “poor” for very long.

My favorite story is Catherynne M. Valente’s “A Delicate Architecture.” Valente has such a weird and wonderful imagination; she always takes me to places I’ve never been, never imagined, and never could imagine. Her story is about a girl made of sugar and spice and everything nice — literally. Who would make a girl out of sugar, and why? And what would happen to that girl? Valente answers all of those questions, and ties her tale back to a classic fairy tale in a way that one can just barely see coming, if she’s paying attention. Valente uses prose the way a pianist uses a piano; with it, she makes beautiful music. I cannot get enough of her work.

Readers will be familiar with many other names in this book: Nancy Farmer, Kelly Link and Holly Black, among others, contribute tales, and Neil Gaiman offers a poem. A few of the stories won’t get much of a grasp on your imagination, but they are only a few. This collection is one to read with your child; you can take turns reading stories out loud to one another, together figure out what classic tale is being retold, and bond over your mutual love for fairy tales in whatever form they take. —Terry Weyna

The Beastly Bride — (2010) Young adult. Publisher: What do werewolves, vampires, and the Little Mermaid have in common? They are all shapechangers. In The Beastly Bride, acclaimed editors Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling bring together original stories and poems from a stellar lineup of authors including Peter S. Beagle, Ellen Kushner, Jane Yolen, Lucius Shepard, and Tanith Lee, as well as many new, diverse voices. Terri Windling provides a scholarly, yet accessible introduction, and Charles Vess’s decorations open each story. From Finland to India, the Pacific Northwest to the Hamptons, shapechangers are part of our magical landscape — and The Beastly Bride is sure to be one of the most acclaimed anthologies of the year.